


Xocoatl

by fardareismai



Category: Chocolat (2000), Chocolat - Joanne Harris, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Abuse, Romance, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 59,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Once upon a time there was a quiet village in the English countryside whose people all believed in tranquillity.</em>  A Nine x Rose AU inspired by the film <i>Chocolat</i> and the book by Joanne Harris by the same name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tranquility

**Author's Note:**

> **Welcome, friends and readers, to a new adventure we are embarking on together. Those of you who know me know that the first chapter of a new fic means a long author's note, and this is no exception.**
> 
>  
> 
> **First, quickly, this is a Nine x Rose AU fic that was originally supposed to be a re-write of the movie/book**  
>  **  
> _Chocolat,_  
>  **  
>  **however, the more I got writing it, the less like the movie it became. So I am calling it an AU that was inspired by both the movie and the book, rather than a re-write.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Second, the title of this piece is the Mayan word for Chocolate (it is also pronounced shock-wa-tal). The direct translation is "bitter water." The choice will become quite clear fairly quickly as the story progresses.**
> 
>  
> 
> **That brings me nicely to my third point. This is not a nice, fluffy, pretty story. It was intended to be, but that is not how it came out. There is abuse: physical, sexual, and emotional. There is rape (though never on-screen, I promise). There is death. There will be religion, and not always treated nicely (though I do try to at least remain even-handed). I will attempt to warn about potentially triggering things at the beginning of chapters, but if you think that this doesn't sound like the fic for you, I completely understand and prefer for you to be comfortable.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Fourth point, which is far less depressing than my third point, is that this will be updated on Fridays, but I can promise an update every Friday, much like Green Fields for anyone who read that.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Finally, I'd like to offer all my love and thanks to WhoLockGal, my dear beta, without whom none of this would exist, Layla Crimson, my dear friend and enabler, and Veritascara, the voice of reason in our little band. Without those ladies and their encouragement and advice, I would have given up on fanfiction a long time ago. I love them all.**
> 
>  
> 
> **As ever, the characters of Doctor Who, and the unnamed town from Chocolat do not belong to me. Probably for the best anyway.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Please feel free to review, as such things make me very happy!**

_Once upon a time there was a quiet village in the English countryside whose people all believed in tranquillity._

It was Sunday, the church bells were tolling, and Rose was meant to answer them. She did not want to go- wanted to say that she was too ill to attend the service, but her husband would call the doctor on her. Not Martha, the local midwife, who would be willing to lie for Rose, but Dr. Mitchell from two towns over who would tell Jimmy that there was nothing wrong with her. It would take time for Dr. Mitchell to arrive, and Rose would miss church, but the cost of Jimmy discovering that she had lied to him would be steep.

Better to just grit her teeth and bear it, Rose thought, turning to the two frocks that were laid out on the bed she shared with her husband on the rare occasions that he did not fall into a drunken stupor down in his bar. One was pretty, if dull, and seasonally-appropriate. The spring was warming much faster than usual and to wear long sleeves when the sun was shining bright and warm as it was that day would incite comment. The trouble with that dress was the matched pair of handprint-shaped bruises on her upper-arms that were still visible despite three days having passed since she had earned them. They would never be covered by the cap sleeves of that garment.

With a sigh, Rose selected the brown, long-sleeved, winter frock. If anyone asked, she would simply tell them that she was feeling a chill when she had dressed that morning.

In Gallifrey the days, weeks, and months were told in the chiming of the church bells. For Rose's entire life this had been so. She could recall with perfect clarity her first communion when she was seven years old, walking the village streets with her mother in a lovely white dress that the older woman had concocted for her, to the sounds of the same bells. She could recall another day, answering the bells of the church in a black dress to whisper goodbye to her parents in their final memorial. There was another day, not long after when, wearing an ill-fitting grey dress borrowed from a woman in the village, Rose had bound herself for life to Jimmy Stone. And this day, some three years later, she still walked the same streets beside that man, though 'walk' may have been an improper term. She had practically to jog to keep up with his long, quick strides with her much shorter legs.

"Come on, Rose, we're going to be late. You took so long with your dress this morning I thought we would miss the service entirely." Jimmy gripped her arm to pull her along, laying his hand none-too-gently against the still-sore bruises that he had left there which made her flinch away from him. He turned a glare on her, but grabbed her arm lower and roughly pulled her along to the entrance of the church.

Jimmy was right, and they were the last in the doors as the vicar closed them behind Rose. As Jimmy led her to their usual pew, she glanced around the room to see that everyone was in their places.

In Gallifrey, when the changes rang, everyone answered. To not do so would be aberrant and nearly criminal. The members of their little community who were not inside of the stuffy church that day at the beginning of Lent were the oddballs and the outcasts. The socially-unacceptable. The people that the rest of the good citizens of town ignored.

 _The lucky ones_ , Rose thought to herself as she rose to sing with the rest of the congregation.

As the hymns were sung, the wind outside picked up. The day went quickly from balmy and breezy to gusty and cool in what seemed a moment and the clouds scudded across the sky to collect over the village. When the celebrants in the chapel stopped singing and sat, they could hear the creak and howl of the wind through the rafters, and Rose thought that perhaps her choice of frock was more appropriate than she had expected.

As Father Williams, ( _"Just Rory," he'd said to her when they had been introduced. "Or Father Rory, if you like. No need to stand on formality, we're all going to become quite close, I'm sure."_ ) a pleasant-faced man only a few years older than Rose's twenty with a sweet disposition, mounted the steps to the pulpit from which he would give the morning's homily, Rose allowed herself to relax as much as the hard wood of the church pew would allow. Everyone would turn their apparent attention to the vicar now, and no one would notice if she flinched every time Jimmy brushed against her or even shifted slightly in his seat.

The Father glanced at the Countess, seated in the front row, as ever, before beginning his homily. The Countess Nobel sat with her back ramrod-straight and her face a mask of pious ecstasy as she mouthed the words of the homily along with Father Williams.

" _Now Rose," the Countess said, taking Rose aside only moments after Father Rory had introduced himself to her, "you are a married woman, and you'll be sure that you hold Father Williams in the proper esteem, no matter what liberties he has offered you. Isn't that right?"_

In Gallifrey, you did as you were told, and so he was Father Williams from then on. Rose did not seek the vicar out in friendship as he was obviously an ally of the Countess, who was an ally of her husband. Rose might have wondered when she became so cynical as to group members of the town into "ally" and "enemy," but she knew the answer.

_Two days after her parents were laid to rest in their graves, Jimmy had asked for her hand. He had been courting her for nearly a year, but she refused his suit, telling him that she simply could not get married so soon after her parents' death._

_Not three hours later, the Countess appeared at Rose's door._

" _You must accept Jimmy's offer, you know," she had said._

_Rose had been offended and horrified. "My parents have not been gone a week, Countess. This is no time to be thinking of romance and marriages, I am in mourning!"_

" _What do you think you shall do with yourself, then? A young woman alone. How will you care for yourself?"_

" _I will run Henrick's, as my mother and father did," Rose said, defiantly, referring to the bakery that had belonged to her parents for several years._

" _You do not seem to understand your situation, Rose. Your parents took out a large loan from me to purchase the bakery and these apartments. That loan is not paid off, and now that they are gone, I shall have to transfer it to you, with the unpaid interest. Selling Henrick's and these rooms will not quite cover it, but I will allow it because it is all you have._

_Rose was stunned. "You would not allow me to pay it back over time as my parents did?"_

" _You are unfeeling of my situation, Rose. Your parents were married, dependable, and stable. You are very young and would be running the bakery entirely on your own. I simply cannot pin my trust on a seventeen-year-old who has never run a business before. No, you must pay it in full as soon as you are able."_

_Rose began to tremble. "Then I will find other work and other rooms."_

" _There is none to be found in Gallifrey, you know that."_

" _Then I shall leave Gallifrey."_

" _And do what?" The Countess' voice became cold and condescending. "Travel to a neighbouring town and open a bakery there? No one will loan you money, you are a little girl with no business acumen and no one to care for you. Travel to London and do what? Become a whore? Join the gypsies or the river rats?"_

_Rose's trembling had stopped and she sat frozen and horrified as the older woman's words washed over her carrying away both her sense of self and her future in a wave._

" _Jimmy's offering you a lot, Rose," the Countess continued, her voice now softer and more gentle. "He owns his bar outright, and he'll take care of you. There's no reason to leave Gallifrey. We'll all watch out for you, just as your mother would have wanted."_

_And that clinched it for Rose. Her mother had wanted her to say in Gallifrey, had been afraid of London, where you didn't know your neighbours, and had wanted Rose to marry Jimmy Stone._

" _Jimmy has his pride, so he won't ask you again, you know. You'll have to go and tell him that you've reconsidered and hope he takes you back."_

_And Rose had done so- had begged for this life that she now lead. She had sold her home, her livelihood, and herself to the town of Gallifrey._

Father Williams continued in his pre-Lent homily. Rose had an idea that he might be a good speaker and a good theologian, but he was too cowed by the Countess. It was no secret that he wrote his homilies and then gave them to her for "corrections" every week.

Rose could not fault the man his weakness, but it did make her wonder at the God who had chosen this man as his mouthpiece, but could not stand up to the force of personality that was the Countess Nobel. Was that God as weak as they?

"The season of Lent is upon us," the Father said. "This is, of course, a time of abstinence. Hopefully also a time of reflection. Above all, let this be for us a time of sincere penitence."

As the howling of the wind nearly drowned out the Father's words, Rose wondered what she must be penitent for. What had she done so wrong to be punished with the death of her parents and her marriage to the man at her side. Was it merely the sin of wanting more than Gallifrey's grey buildings, uncertain weather, and all-too-familiar faces? The crime of dreaming and of hopes disappointed? Or perhaps it was her disappointment with her lot for which she was being punished.

Rose's mother had loved this town. She had loved the simplicity and tranquillity to be found there. Rose had always looked at the stars, the hills, and the roads and wondered what lay beyond them. Her mother had called it "putting on airs and graces" when she had talked of London, Paris, and Barcelona, and had taken her books away. Her mother would have been impressed with Rose's life as it was, and would have told her to put away her childish dreams and be happy with what she had.

Just the thought made Rose feel sick.

The wind reached a glorious climax at much the same moment that the Father was reaching the climax of his homily, forcing him nearly to shout to be heard.

"Where will we find truth? Where do we start looking? Where will we find truth? We will find it..."

The door at the entrance to the church banged open, interrupting the Father and causing some of the women to scream in surprise. Countess Nobel quickly went to close it against the roaring wind, but before the door closed completely, Rose thought that she saw a flash of red against the grey stone of the town.

For some reason, Rose felt that change was coming on the wind, and she smiled.


	2. North Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Just a quick explanation for anyone who might have been confused, particularly if you know the movie, Rose has been cast as Josephine, not as Vianne. We're meeting Vianne in this chapter.**
> 
> **In the book, the love story was between Roux and Josephine, not Roux and Vianne, which is really the only reason that I bother bringing up the book at all.**
> 
> **This chapter has no warnings at all, and I hope you enjoy!**

Donna Noble blew into Gallifrey on the north wind, head bowed against the gale, her vivid hair peeking out from beneath the cloak she had wrapped close around herself. She stopped at one of the houses on the main square across from the church and wrestled with her carpet bag and the door for a few moments before entering and allowing the wind to slam the door shut.

"Who the hell are you?"

Donna remained facing the door as the smile bloomed across her face. Gods, but she had missed that voice.

Finally, she lowered the deep purple hood on her cloak and turned to face the man who was standing in the entry to the kitchen holding a carving knife as though to attack her with it.

"Hello, Gramps. I did write."

The man's blue eyes under his bushy eyebrows widened. White teeth flashed behind his scrubby white beard as he grinned at the young, lovely redhead in his doorway.

"Oh my sweet girl," he cried, rushing toward her, "I didn't expect you for hours yet."

Donna ducked her grandfather's hug as he still had his cleaver in hand. "I made good time. How about you put that away so I can hug you without worrying about being eviscerated, yeah?"

He glanced sheepishly down at the knife and then grinned at his granddaughter. "All right then. Come on back and I'll make you a cup of tea."

Donna smiled and followed her grandfather back to his kitchen, where he went about the comfortingly English process of making tea. Donna sat and soaked it all in. It had been close to two years since she had last been in England and longer since she had been in Gallifrey. When on the continent she drank coffee, strong and sweet, like the French. When she was back in her home country, however, it was always tea.

Wilf set a mug of tea before his granddaughter, prepared to the specifications she had preferred when last he'd seen her, though it had been some time, and sat across from her with his own mug.

Donna picked up the cup, and took a moment simply to breathe in the steam of a cup of tea made by someone who loved her. There was no finer homecoming.

"So tell me where you've been."

It always went this way- whether she had been gone a few days or, in this case, four years, Wilf always sat her down and made her tell the stories of her adventures. She wrote weekly and sent postcards from every major city that she passed through, but it was different for him to hear her stories first-hand.

"Oh Gramps, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

And so she did. She told him about Andalucia, and Vienna, and Athens, and Pavia. She told him of friends made and villages saved and he was the perfect audience. He laughed in the right places, gasped in the right places, and never tried to guess what would come next.

When finally she wound down, and their second cups of tea were emptied and the plate of biscuits that Wilf had set between them was nothing but crumbs, he fixed her with his sharp eyes. Those eyes hadn't changed in the decade since she had run off, Donna thought.

"And now you're home. Why are you home, Donna?"

"I couldn't come back to see my old Gramps?"

"Donna, don't act like I'm a fool. I know what it's like when you come visit. You asked about available shops to rent. You've come home this time, why?"

Donna sighed, knowing she was caught out. Really, she knew she was too old to lie to her grandfather anyway.

"Have you heard from Christopher lately?"

Wilf did not blink at this apparent non-sequitur. "Twice a year, same as it's been for the past two decades. Should be around in a few weeks, in fact."

Donna nodded. Her older brother had left when he was 15, running from the responsibility of his name. He'd returned briefly for Donna's aborted wedding when she was 20, and again for their father's funeral five years later- the last time Donna had seen or heard from him. He maintained no address, so she was unable to write, so the blame was entirely on him.

 _You're hardly known for keeping an address yourself_ , a voice in her head retorted, but Donna shoved it down. Blaming her brother for their rocky relationship was a long-held tradition for her, and she wasn't about to change it now.

"I turn 30, this summer, and he'll be 35," Donna said with a sigh. "It's all right for him, men can marry whenever, but me... well, I'm out of luck now. A verified old maid, right? So I've been thinking about what I want and I decided what I wanted was... well... a different sort of adventure. A bit more domestic, maybe."

"Have you spoken with your mother?"

Donna rolled her eyes. "Why should I? I am a woman grown and she has no power over me."

"Donna," Wilf said, warningly.

Donna sighed. "She's at the church now, and you know how I feel about that. The Countess Nobel will learn what I'm on about when she pokes her nose into my shop, as she is certain to do as soon as she realizes that a shop is opening at all. That is... is there a shop available?"

"There's... there's Henrick's."

"The bakery? The Tylers' place? But where are they?" Jackie and Pete had been friends, and their sweet daughter Rose had been a ray of sunshine in the dreary old town.

"Jackie and Pete died of the 'flu three years back," Wilf said, heavily.

"And Rose?"

"Married to Jimmy Stone, from the pub."

Donna frowned. She'd never been particularly friendly with the barman, though he was her age, putting him ten years older than Rose. He had always struck her as far too ready with his fists or with an insult or criticism. She could hope that sweet Rose would have proven a calming influence on the man, but she was more worried that he would have dimmed the girl's light instead.

She shook her head again- there would be time enough to re-learn the dynamics of the village of her birth at another time. As it stood, the old bakery would be absolutely perfect for what she had in mind, better than she could have hoped for.

"I'll take it, and the apartments above. Who owns it these days?"

"That would be me."

Donna scowled at her grandfather. "You bought her family business from Rose?"

Wilf's face went hard. "I was the only person who would buy it from her. Your mother loaned Pete and Jackie the money to start Henrick's, and when they died she insisted on getting paid back immediately."

"You're kidding."

Wilf shook his head sadly. "Had it out with your mother about it afterwards. She's never been the same, Rose, and Sylvia hasn't spoken to me since."

Donna looked shocked. "You said it's been three years. Three years you and Mum have been living in the same town and you haven't spoken?"

Wilf shrugged noncommittally. "She keeps a good public face, you know. If we pass in the street or some such, but nothing else. It was always a sticking point that I wouldn't go to that blasted church of hers, and this was the final straw."

"I wish you'd have told me," Donna said, reaching forward to take his gnarled hand in hers.

"And what difference would it have made? You were out having your adventures and good on you for it. No need to worry you with what you couldn't change."

Donna wasn't sure she agreed with her grandfather, but she allowed the subject to drop.

"All right then, I'll take the bakery," Donna said. She was already envisioning the space as she'd known it as a child and thinking about how she would change and transform it to become her own. "What'll be the rent, landlord?"

Wilf listed a number that Donna knew was far too low for the shop and the apartments above.

"Granddad," she warned, glaring at the older man.

"What?" he asked, all innocence. "It's a family rate. I'd offer the same to your brother if he wanted it."

Donna laughed at the idea of Chris running a bakery, though how it was more absurd than what he was actually doing was beyond her.

"All right then, if you insist. But if you die destitute because you were too soft on your tenants, you mustn't blame me."

Wilf smiled gently at her. "All right then, that's settled. Do you want to see the old place?"

"Yes, of course."

~?~?~?~?~

It was a bit like stepping out of Mr. Wells' time machine. For a moment, Henrick's hadn't changed and Donna half expected to see Jackie- plump and smiling at the customers, shrilly shouting at her husband or anyone who threatened her and hers - coming out to take her place behind the counter. She could nearly hear Pete- ginger and flighty and just a bit mad- cursing in the kitchen. And Rose- bright, beautiful, singing, and chattering Rosie- running about underfoot, a brilliant spark of light in the warm, comfortable space.

But it all dissipated after only a moment. The pinks of the walls were faded now, the once-gleaming counters were dingy, and the air smelled not of baking bread, flour and sugar, but of dust and the beginnings of decay.

"I'll expect you to keep it nice," Wilf said, ironically.

Donna did not answer as she moved through the building. Memories of her youth were in every corner, lurking like ghosts, but also the ghosts of what could be. The kitchen was huge and disorganized and beautiful. She continued up to the living quarters with Wilf trailing after her, looking askance at everything as they went. The apartments were neat- more so than the chaos of the kitchen below. There were three rooms above, one small, one medium, and one relatively large. The small room had been painted a little-girl's pink and a narrow, maiden's bed and chest of drawers remained though the bed linens were gone and the drawers contained nothing but cedar. The medium-sized room held a desk and a small filing cabinet. The largest room held a double-bed and a lovely old wardrobe.

"She sold everything save for her own clothes. She went to Jimmy's house empty-handed."

"Because of mother," Donna said, roughly.

"Donna..." Wilf warned.

"Tell me I'm wrong then. Tell me that Rose would have sold Henrick's if she hadn't been forced to. Tell me she would have married Jimmy Stone."

"They'd been courting for a year."

"Is she happy, Granddad? Is that little girl happy?"

"She's a woman now, Donna. A woman married for three years. She's no child, hasn't been for a long time."

Donna shook her head. Since her grandmother had died, Wilf had hidden himself away, too afraid to get close to anyone again. Donna knew that she had been on the run for ten years- ever since Lance and the horror of her attempted wedding to him- and she had learned many wonderful, beautiful, painful, and important things, but the most important was that you couldn't just pretend that injustice and wrongs weren't happening when they were outside your door.

Donna had chosen to return to her home, and she was going to make it the place that it should be, and nothing could stop her.


	3. The Bakery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **So... when I said in the beginning of this story that there was a non-con/rape and a violence warning? That'd be this chapter.**
> 
> **There's also some pretty nasty language. The sort of thing that I don't recommend saying around kids, grandparents, and preachers.**

The bells tolled to release the parishioners from the confines of the Church and back into the world with holiness wrapped about themselves like cloaks against the wind.

Rose Stone glanced, as ever she did, at the blank shopfront of the bakery across the square- the place that had been her home for her entire life. Three years it had stood empty, and Rose had always held some vague hope that one day, if she saved the few pennies that she was able to keep from the grocery money, she might be able to get it back. Three years and barely 10£ saved, and it was a wild, impossible hope, but it was one she clung to.

As her eyes scanned over the building, she thought she saw movement in the window of the rooms above the shop. She blinked and it was gone, but for a moment it had looked like… but of course, it was impossible. Her parents were dead and gone and the old bakery stood empty.

Rose shook her head and trailed after Jimmy toward her home and all that she could hope for or expect any longer.

~?~?~?~?~

The rumours of the new tenant of the old bakery moved through the town like a wave. It began small with Harriet Jones, who noticed someone taping newsprint over the front window as she crossed the square to get to a hair salon appointment. The glass was too filthy to see who was doing it, but Harriet did notice that she was wearing a bright green frock.

Harriet told Astrid, who owned the salon, as she sat under the hot air dryer waiting for her curls to set.

Astrid may have mentioned it to the next woman who came into the salon, Blon, who mentioned it to her brother, the greengrocer, Jocrassa.

Jocrassa said nothing until Sneed, the butcher, came by and the two got talking about the weather, the state of the roads, and whether Sneed would visit the new bakery when it opened.

Sneed hadn't known the bakery was occupied again, so he walked by on his way back to his own shop and saw, as had everyone that day, the plate window covered over with newsprint and the shop door open. From the open door he could hear a slightly off-key rendition of _Madame Butterfly_.

Sneed, however, did not enter and greet the new resident. Neither did Christina deSouza, who wandered by an hour later, having heard about the phenomenon at the café that morning. Nor did Val or Biff Cane extend a word of welcome, when they walked by with their son Jethro.

As the day passed and word spread, more and more people passed the entrance to the bakery, but no one entered. A new element in town was to be treated with wary suspicion until it proved benign.

Finally, around midday, the gossip made it to the heights and the Countess Sylvia Noble, a small, neat woman with carefully maintained blonde hair and a plain silver band about her left-hand ring finger, descended to offer welcome and warning and to satisfy the curiosity of the populace for which she assumed responsibility.

Sylvia approached the open door of the bakery. She could hear up-tempo singing from someone with a fairly bad voice who seemed to be taking pleasure in the song, coming from the kitchen. Sylvia knocked on the wood of the door loud enough to be heard and when the singing stopped, she stepped into the shop.

"I am the Countess Noble," Sylvia called out, loud enough to be heard from the back room. "I just wanted to offer you the town's welcome." She waited for the new tenant to appear and glanced around the room.

In the three years since the Tylers had vacated the shop, time had not been kind. The walls were grimy and the pink paint (Jackie's choice) had faded and begun to flake. It was equally clear, however, that the new baker had been working very hard as the countertops gleamed and the floor was carefully swept if not yet scrubbed.

Sylvia heard a movement from the kitchen and looked up to find herself faced with a young woman with flame-red hair that was caught up under a purple kerchief and shrewd green eyes.

"Donna!" she cried.

"Hullo, mother. Or, sorry, Countess. Should I curtsy?" Donna sketched a sarcastic bow.

"What are you doing here?"

Donna glanced down at her worn green frock and the apron she wore over it then raised her eyes back to her mother's and said, innocently, "why, I'm preparing for a cotillion, Mother. Isn't that obvious?" Sylvia glared at her and Donna huffed out an irritated breath. "I'm trying to get this place liveable again so that I don't accidentally poison someone once I open up shop."

" _You're_ the new tenant here?"

Donna rolled her eyes. "I hardly spend my time cleaning up nearly derelict buildings for fun now, do I?"

"You're planning on opening a bakery during Lent? How could you, Donna? The temptation!"

"Don't worry, Mother, I'm not opening a bakery during Lent."

Sylvia stopped short. "Then when are you opening?"

Donna smiled, mischievously. "About two weeks from now, but it won't be a bakery."

Sylvia narrowed her eyes at her wayward daughter. "What will it be then?"

"A surprise," Donna said. She then turned to return to the kitchen.

"Donna!" Sylvia cried, halting her daughter. Donna turned and raised an eyebrow at her mother. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming home?"

For a long moment, Donna said nothing, merely looked at her mother with an unreadable expression. Finally she spoke. "I came _back_ , mother. I did not come _home_." With that cryptic pronouncement, Donna turned and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the Countess Noble in the peculiar position of having no idea what to think.

~?~?~?~?~

Over lunch in the pub, as Rose dished up greasy chips and shepherd's pie, she heard the word "bakery" spoken several times. She thought little enough of it and she ducked in and out of the kitchen that afternoon. It wasn't until the evening, when Jimmy sat at a table playing cards, leaving her to run both the bar and the kitchen that she heard the whole story in snatches and bits.

The stories were disjointed, but Rose was able to put together that Henrick's was inhabited again by a woman that no one had seen save, possibly, the Countess. Somehow, however, it was known that whatever the shop was (it seemed to be common knowledge that it would no longer be a bakery) would be opening in approximately two weeks, and that the Countess was unhappy about it.

Speculation was rampant but all that Rose could focus on was that her bakery- her home- now belonged to someone else. It was their right to paint her mother's pink walls, and their right to move her father's cookware. They might even find and throw out some of her father's mad inventions that were kept under the cabinets in the kitchen.

The one, tiny flame of hope that had warmed Rose for the past three years was gone.

The rest of the night passed in a haze of beer and grease, drunken arguments and shouted orders. Rose worked with only half of her mind engaged. She was trying to decide what to do- would she go to the old bakery and look in? See the person who now called home the same place that she still did sometimes, in her mind? Or would she avoid the place and deny the change that it portended?

Something inside of her objected to this last. Perhaps it was some remnant of the defiance and curiosity that had been so much a part of her as a young girl. Some spark that had not yet been smothered beneath the drudgery and pain of her life.

Rose resolved herself then. The following morning she would go to the bakery. She would look in and see the place that had been hers and now was no longer. She might even see the woman who was such a curiosity among her neighbours. As Rose announced that the bar was closing, she was even able to sneak some small measure of enthusiasm into the statement for the first time in years and as she wiped the counters, carried the glasses, plates, and flatware into the kitchen, and began to scrub, she even found herself humming.

Rose's relative good humour did not escape the notice of her husband, even as blearily drunk as he was. He frowned over his beer, considering her movements during the evening. He tried to remember who she had talked to, or what had been talked about, but the alcohol in his system made the recall uncertain. He thought perhaps she had spoken to one bloke (was his name Matthew? Peter?) before announcing last call and starting to clear up.

He couldn't bring up what they might have talked about, but the logic of drink told him that it must have been plans to meet once he, Jimmy, was asleep.

When Rose had been sixteen, she had been the most beautiful girl in town by general consensus. Hair like sunlight, lush figure, sparkling eyes, and a smile that shot straight to a man's heart and points south. When Jimmy had begun courting her he had received his fair share of slaps on the back from the men in his acquaintance. When he had married her only two weeks after her parents' death, he was lauded as a hero who had taken in the penniless girl. The rumour had made it about town that Rose had intended to go to London. Everyone knew that London was a place that only the very wealthy and the morally questionable went, and since Rose was obviously not wealthy, it was clear that Jimmy had saved her from a fate worse than death.

Jimmy had never forgotten the way other men had looked at Rose when she was younger. These days her hair was darker and lanker. Her eyes were sunken and her face pale and she rarely ever smiled. Her figure was thinner, less lush. Men rarely looked at her anymore, but it still happened on occasion, and Jimmy did not share what was his.

He had waited until they were married to have her, and, like a good virgin, she had cried the first time he had done so. Then, the second night of their marriage, she had cried again. When she cried the third night as well, he had slapped her. It had shut her up, but she had looked at him with such shock and rising defiance that he had slapped her again.

"This is what your life is, Rosie my girl. You are mine to fuck when I please, so you'd best learn to enjoy it. No more crying. The next time you cry in my bed, you will get worse."

He'd fucked her that night and she had remained silent as she had every night after. He'd soon grown tired of his new wife, however, as she had proven quite frigid, and it was less than a year into their marriage before he was finding comfort in other arms or in the bottom of a bottle more nights than not.

This night, the whispers of the ale in his mind said that she was planning to cuckold him. She was too cold to want to do so for her own benefit, so she was doing it simply to laugh at him, and that made the edges of his vision go bloody. He had saved the ungrateful bitch, and this was how she repaid him? He would show her.

Rose was nearly finished with the dishes when she heard a noise at the entrance to the kitchen. She turned to see her husband standing there with an expression on his face that she recognized. Rose began to back away from him, hands out in a placating gesture as though he were a wild creature.

He crossed the kitchen in what seemed an instant and was in front of her, his eyes unfocussed and furious. He grabbed her arm and threw her up against the wall, the back of her head connecting with a sickening crack.

"I saved you, you bitch!" he yelled incoherently. "Without me you would be a whore or dead, and I took you in out of the goodness of my heart and you repay me like this? You would fuck me over like this?"

"Jimmy, I..." Rose began, and he slapped her across the mouth, splitting her lip.

"Don't you fucking speak. You don't get to speak after what you've done."

Jimmy grabbed her again and threw her now to the counter, which hit her in her solar plexus, causing her to double over onto the freshly cleaned surface. He came up behind her and shoved her face onto the countertop, pressing her cheek into the stone.

"You would be nothing without me, you know that?" he said, and Rose could hear the quiet jingle of his belt and knew what he was doing.

"Jimmy, no," she whispered.

"What did I tell you about crying? You are my wife and I will do with you as I please."

Rose did not cry.

~?~?~?~?~

Jimmy left Rose in a crumpled heap and stumbled up to their bed and fell asleep face down across the middle of it.

Rose pulled herself off the floor, aching and humiliated and broken, but her eyes remained dry. She wondered, as she returned to finish the interrupted cleaning, whether she even remembered how to weep anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: I'll just tell you now- things will get better for Rose, but it will take some time. She's going to be okay in the end, and Jimmy will get what's coming to him.**
> 
> **I just want to be sure everyone knows that and isn't afraid.**
> 
> **Thank you all so very much for reading and reviewing.**


	4. The Midwife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Yesterday was Martha Jones appreciation day. In honour of that day, I present you a chapter that is mostly about Martha, because she is a star!**
> 
> **This chapter will deal with the aftermath of what happened in the last chapter, but if you made it through that one, this one should be relatively easy. There are issues of racism and racial tension, however, so if that concerns you, please proceed with caution.**
> 
> **As ever, thank you so very much for reading, reviewing, and generally being fantastic!**

There was one person in Gallifrey in whom Rose was able to confide. One person that she considered a friend.

Martha Jones had arrived in Gallifrey some two years prior with a recommendation from a Sister Hame as the new midwife for the parish. The citizens of Gallifrey had looked askance at the young, lovely woman for, though they had requested a midwife be provided, she was _not_ what they had expected.

She was very young.

She was not a nun, nor was she married, and she was very beautiful.

She was _coloured_.

The Countess had sent several inquiries to the Sisters of Plenitude who had trained and recommended her and received nothing back but assurances that Martha was the top of her class and would make the citizens of Gallifrey proud to call her one of their own.

The Gallifreyans were civilized, modern thinkers. _Some_ people in the world might believe that a person with dark skin was somehow sub-human, but that was not the case in Gallifrey, of course. A coloured person might be able to be as intelligent as a white person, but to have one in a woman's sick room? More than that, to have one _in charge_ of a woman's sick room? It seemed a step too far.

In the first six months that Martha lived in Gallifrey, two babies were born without her ever being contacted. She had attended church one week with the mothers- swollen, waddling, and shifting uncomfortably in their seats- and the next time she had seen them, they had had babes in arms.

Martha tried not to take it personally- it often took a community time to warm to a new midwife, and she was wise enough to be aware that it would take much longer for her, _considering_.

It was not until Jamie McCrimmon's wife, Zoe, had trouble with their first child's birth and Dr. Mitchell was too far away to be reached that anyone deigned to offer Martha an opportunity to do that which she had been trained to do. She had delivered the breech and both Zoe and little Patrick had made it through whole and healthy and the McCrimmon family's word was enough for the rest of the town.

Martha was able to practice her profession, but she was not invited into any drawing room in town. It was enough to allow her into a sick room; the good citizens of Gallifrey did not feel obligated to extend any further freedom to the young woman.

Martha had found a friend in Rose Stone, however, though it had been random happenstance that had brought them together.

When Patrick McCrimmon was some two weeks old, Martha found herself wandering the back alleys of Gallifrey, simply exploring as she was wont to do. As she passed one alley, she heard ragged panting punctuated by the occasional whimper. It sounded like an animal in pain, and Martha considered it her duty as a doctor (of sorts) to investigate.

Down the alley, outside of a door that Martha thought must lead into the back of Stone's Place- the pub just off the village square- she found a girl a few years younger than herself, sitting on the filthy ground with her eyes closed, cradling her left wrist against herself with her right hand and breathing harshly through her nose as though to control pain.

"Are you all right?" Martha asked.

The other girl's eyes popped open and Martha was reminded of the eyes of a fox she had once found caught in a hunter's trap in the woods outside the convent- all pain and dumb fear that would lash out at any attempts to help. This girl's eyes were deeper, cleverer, and, Martha thought, infinitely more dangerous. Not a fox then, but perhaps a wolf.

Martha might be able to walk away from an animal to keep from being bitten, but she could not walk away from this young woman. She took a step closer, which elicited a flurry of movement from the younger woman away from her.

"I'm fine, just leave me a-" she cut off as one of her movements jarred her left wrist and she let out a whimper of pain that went straight to Martha's heart.

"You're not fine, you're hurt," Martha said, kneeling down in front of the other girl, voice brooking no argument. "Let me take a look. I'm a doctor... nearly."

Those wary gold eyes finally seemed to take Martha in.

"You're the new midwife," she said.

"I am," Martha agreed. "Always wanted to be a doctor. They're letting girls do it now, you know, but it's a bit harder for me because... well..." She raised a hand to indicate her face, and let the sentence hang.

"You're from London?" Rose finished the sentence for her and smiled. The pull of muscles felt unfamiliar and Rose tried to remember the last time she had smiled or laughed and couldn't. It must have been weeks.

Martha laughed. "Good old London Town," she agreed. She had been shocked at the way the smile had changed the other girl's face. She looked younger, more innocent, and much more beautiful. "Can I see your arm? I'll try not to hurt you. Best doctor in town, you know?"

Rose bit her bottom lip uncertainly, but extended her left arm out to the other woman who took it in cool, gentle hands.

Martha looked carefully at the girl's arm. The colouration of the bruises told her that it had been some 12 hours since she'd been hurt, and given the other girl's responses, she was quite certain that the bone had been fractured.

"What happened?" Martha asked, lightly. She knew what had happened. She could see it in the way the other girl was curled in on herself, in the dimness behind her eyes and the way her own smile had seemed to surprise her. Martha had seen it in London many times, and in the women who had come to the Sisters for help. It was important what the other woman would say, however, so she asked.

"I... fell," Rose mumbled, and Martha nodded, accepting this answer.

"All right then. Do you mind coming back to my place? I'll need to splint it, and I've some things that will take the edge off the pain, if you'd like."

Almost without intention, Rose accepted the other woman's invitation.

"I'm Martha, by the way, Martha Jones," she said as they walked down the street to Martha's little flat.

"Rose Stone."

"Pleasure, Rose."

Martha led Rose to the rooms that the sisters had arranged for her in Gallifrey and indicated for her to sit at the scrubbed wooden table at which she ate. As she gathered her medical supplies and sat down to deal with Rose's injuries, Martha maintained a constant line of chatter to help her nervous patient to relax. She talked about her family in London.

"Mother wishes I were married," she said as she set the splint and began to wrap Rose's arm. "I suppose I wouldn't mind it, but I don't want to give up my work. My brother is married and she has a granddaughter now, so perhaps her letters will stop asking about men soon. What about you? Are your parents nearby or are you on your own like me?" Even as she asked, Martha could feel the muscles in the arm that she was wrapping tense. She glanced up and saw that wary, cornered look in Rose's eyes again. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Martha assured her. "I didn't mean to be nosey."

Rose relaxed, fractionally, and Martha returned to her work and silence reigned for a few minutes until Rose finally spoke.

"They're dead."

Martha glanced up quickly, and then back down at her work, remaining silent to allow Rose to continue with whatever she was going to say.

"My mum and dad... a year now. A year today."

It had been the anniversary of her parents' death that had earned her the fractured wrist. She had placed her hand on Jimmy's arm to ask him to accompany her to the churchyard that day, and he'd flung it away from him to crash into the wall.

"Grow up, Rose. If you can't go by yourself, don't go, but I'm not coming with you," he'd said, as she'd gasped in pain and cradled her wrist.

Martha looked up from her work in shock. She reached out her left hand to take Rose's uninjured right and squeezed gently.

"I'm sorry, Rose. I didn't mean... I'm so sorry."

Rose met the other woman's large, dark eyes and found no pity there, only sympathy and sorrow. She bit her lower lip and then made a decision.

"Martha? Would you be willing to go to the churchyard with me? To their graves?"

And so it came that the midwife and the publican's wife were to be found in the churchyard that afternoon before the graves of Jackie and Pete Tyler. Martha held Rose's hand and wondered that the other woman did not cry. She knew that she would have, standing over her parents' graves, but the younger woman's eyes remained dry.

Over the weeks the two women began to see each other a minimum of once a week for tea and talk. Both were outcasts- Rose for the rumours surrounding her wedding to Jimmy and her own reticence to allow people into her life, and Martha for her skin colour- and both found that it was easier to be an outcast with a friend.

Rose never told Martha the secrets of her marriage, but Martha had eyes and a brain and could see and hear what Rose did not say.

When Rose had sat at her table, hands shaking and whispered that she thought she might be pregnant, Martha had heard the tremble in her voice; the hopelessness and horror and, without a word, had put together an herbal tea that included pennyroyal and parsley and given it to her with no explanation more than the instruction to drink it no more than three times a day for six days. The following week, when she had returned, the palpable relief on Rose's face was enough to tell Martha that what she had done was right, even if the Sisters would have severely disapproved.

When Rose appeared at her door with cuts and bruises and tales of tripping and falling, Martha said nothing but applied salves and bandages. She never told her friend to leave her husband, but she convinced Rose to talk about her dreams and she helped the young woman smile again. She wished that she could do more, but felt powerless to know what.

The day after Henrick's new tenant was discovered, Martha expected Rose to come for tea. The midwife never went to the pub, Rose's husband had never shown her anything but vague distaste and Martha had never attempted to ingratiate herself with the publican. He knew that she and his wife were friends, but he ignored it as though doing so would make it go away.

When tea-time came and went without Rose's arrival, Martha became worried. She had expected that her friend would want to talk about the future of her parents' bakery. Martha could not imagine what would keep Rose away and so she did something that she had never done before, though she had considered it a time or two.

Martha returned to the alley where first she had met Rose Stone and approached the door before which she'd found the blonde waif sitting. She knocked gently and waited quietly. After a long moment the door opened and Martha was greeted with an image of Rose that she had never seen.

Rose was pale, but this woman was ghostly. Rose's hair often hung lank, but this woman's hair was a bird's nest of un-combed strands piled onto the back of her head. Rose smiled but rarely, but this woman looked as though she might never smile again, even once her split lip healed. Rose's eyes often held pain and fear, but this woman's eyes were dead.

Martha moved forward and, without a word, wrapped her friend in a hug. She did not know what kind of horror that Jimmy Stone had inflicted upon her to kill the light behind Rose's eyes, but Martha wished that he would burn in hell for it. Rose remained stiff in her arms for a long moment until, suddenly, she seemed to break and fell into Martha's hug like a marionette whose strings were cut. Her entire body trembled, and though she did not weep, she seemed likely to shake apart. Martha held her through the storm and when, finally, the trembling subsided and Rose stepped away, she left her hands on the other woman's shoulders.

"I hate him," Martha said quietly.

Rose said nothing, but nodded, eyes on the floor between them.

"Let me help you today," Martha said. Rose's eyes met hers, and there was that defensiveness and pride and Martha was marginally reassured that they still remained, if tempered for now. "Please?" she added.

Rose bit her lip and nodded again. The two women worked in the kitchen of the pub in silence save for the clatter of pots and plates and sizzling oil, but comforted by the closeness of the other.


	5. Premonition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Oh look, I finally remembered to bring the Ninth Doctor into this Ninth Doctor story... imagine that!**
> 
> **I'm sorry, this is a very short chapter, and I shall retain my once-a-week schedule in spite of that. I love all of you that are sticking with me through this story, and I hope you continue to enjoy it. It will pick up from here, I promise!**

Jack Harkness followed the sound of low-voiced cursing and found a pair of black-booted feet sticking out the end of black trousers and disappearing under the side of one of their river craft that had been pulled onto dry land for repairs. The cursing stopped as soon as Jack came within a few feet of those black boots, and he smiled- he always teased the owner of the boots that he had extraordinary hearing.

"What do you want, Harkness?" A gruff voice issued from beneath the boat.

Jack could see the man- his best friend- in his mind's eye. He'd be scowling, blue eyes squinting at the work, grease and filth under his fingernails and his ever-present screwdriver either in his right hand, or set down in easy reach.

"'Bout time we headed toward Gallifrey, isn't it?" Jack asked, nonchalantly.

He got nothing in answer but a grunt and he sighed. By this time most years, the crew had begun moving toward the little town, but for some reason this year their leader had held them back for over a week now.

The Doctor- for so he preferred to be called, though Jack knew his Christian and surnames- was not an easy man to read, but a decade of camaraderie had given Jack some insight into the other man's head and he could tell that his friend was troubled.

"You want to talk about it?" Jack asked, anticipating the answer.

"You know I'm a genius, right?" The gruff voice from under the boat made Jack smile as this was precisely what he had expected. "I can talk about anything. Can talk for England, my sister used to say. I can tell you the name of every constellation you can see with the naked eye. I can tell you about almost every type of flora and fauna on this old river. I can discuss what's happening in London and Paris and Moscow and Madrid. I can talk about American politics and Chinese trade. I can not, however, talk about a subject when you fail to mention what that subject is in your request."

Jack rolled his eyes. "You know exactly what I'm talking about, Doc. Why haven't we headed to Gallifrey? Don't give me a line about that boat, it's been fixed for two days now, or do you think I'm as big a fool as Mickey?"

The Doctor growled and rolled out from under the boat. "I never said you were a fool, Jack," he said as he dusted his trousers off and reached for the battered leather jacket that hung over the stern of the boat.

The two men moved to sit together, backs against a tree, looking out over the sluggish river.

"Tell me why you're delaying going home, Chris."

The Doctor, Noble child of Gallifrey, sighed. "Got an odd feeling about going back. Call it premonition, call it instinct, I'm not sure what it is, but I've this odd feeling that when we go to Gallifrey this year, everything is going to be different."

"Good different or bad different?"

"No idea. Trouble is that I'm happy with the way things are right now. I'm afraid it'll be my mother or grandfather trying to meddle in my life."

Jack hummed non-committally.

"My first instinct is to turn tail and run, like I always do when they get going."

Jack nodded again, knowing that this was true. "What's different this time then?"

The Doctor sighed. "I can't just not go back and check on Gramps. I have to do it since Donna's not going to."

"Then we'll stop by, you'll see Wilf, and we'll head back out after that. Easy as can be."

The Doctor said nothing, and Jack glanced over at him.

"Some reason that won't work, Doc?"

The Doctor sighed. "I'm about to turn 35, Jack."

"As am I, Doc. Do tell, what's your point?"

"You never think maybe we're getting too old for this kind of life?"

Jack laughed and reached over to lay a hand on the Doctor's forehead. "Is that Chris Noble speaking or some alien entity that's taken over his body? Are you actually thinking of giving all this up for... what? A house and a wife and babies? You always said you did this for the freedom. Are you going domestic on us?"

The Doctor chuckled. "No, no, you're right. Don't know what I was thinking. We'll do what you say- check in on Gramps and move on. No sticking around to let him or my mother start trying to meddle."

Jack nodded. "That's more like it. I'll let everyone know that we'll be moving out shortly."

"Thanks, Jack. I owe you one."

Jack flashed a bright grin at his friend. "I'll add it to your tab."


	6. The Chocolate Shop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Ah my dear readers. I have a chapter for you the likes of which you have never seen!**
> 
> **Kay, not really, but it is longer than last week's, so that's something.**
> 
> **I'm not sure that I've said it recently enough, so I'll say it again: every thanks and love in the world to my dear beta, WhoLockGal. And all the thanks and love to all of you who read and review and favourite and are generally lovely people. I know the once-a-week schedule is murderous, and I love all of you who stick with it.**
> 
> **You're all stars and you deserve cookies and hugs. Or gummy bears and high-fives if that's what you're into. Or mangoes and longing looks from across the room. I'm down for whatever.**

The weeks passed in Gallifrey as they pass anywhere- quickly at the ends, and slow as syrup in the middle.

During her first week back, Donna kept the front door of the bakery open as she scrubbed, organized, and repaired, and it seemed that most of the population of the town stopped by to find out what she was doing. Some of them recognized her from the old days, and some did not, but it quickly became common knowledge through the village that it was Donna Noble, one of the two vagabond children of the Countess and the late Count, who was taking over the bakery.

She never said what it was that she would be doing with the space and in the evenings in the pub or the café or over the dinner table, the first topic of conversation always seemed to be the question "what do you suppose the Noble girl is doing with the old bakery?" That question was often followed by speculation about the fact that the Countess and her daughter had not been seen speaking to each other since the first day the girl had been in town. It was near impossible to keep a secret in a village the size of Gallifrey, so everyone was sure they'd have heard if the two women had met.

The whole town had held its breath to see the two Noble women meet at the church on Wednesday- the first day of Lent- but while the Countess was first in line to have ashes painted across her forehead, her mysterious daughter was nowhere to be found.

As the church doors disgorged the town's population back into the sunlight, Donna Noble was to be seen at the entrance of her new shop, paintbrush in hand, colouring the door- which had always been a modest, ordinary shade of brown- a bright, sapphire blue.

The sight was so arresting to everyone who saw it that it caused a bottleneck at the entryway of the church as people stopped to stare. The Countess pushed forward through the crowd to try and disperse the blockage, only to see what it was that held her neighbours in thrall.

As the older woman stood glaring at her daughter- who completely ignored her- and her paintbrush- which did likewise- the rest of the town held their breaths. An Ash Wednesday confrontation between the Countess and her daughter would be the stuff of gossip for years.

To everyone's disappointment, Sylvia simply huffed a breath out of her nose, turned briskly on her heel and strode off toward her own home without another glance at her daughter.

The rest of the town took their cue from their mayor and drifted off in the directions of their own homes and luncheons, discussing the events in the square in hushed voices.

~?~?~?~?~

Donna let out a sigh of relief as the crowd across the square finally dispersed. She'd never intended to make a spectacle of herself- had completely forgotten that it was Ash Wednesday until the bells had begun tolling, in fact. She'd hoped to finish her painting before the service had let out, but she'd been unable to get the squeak out of the door's hinges, and had taken longer than she had planned leaving her painting her door in full view of the people coming from the church as though in blatant protest.

She expected the footsteps as she heard them approach, and steeled herself for an impudent question or accusation.

What she heard instead was a kind, gentle voice, which asked, "may I help?"

Donna settled back on her heels and looked up at the slender young man with the sandy hair and blue eyes who stood over her. His clerical collar stood out white against the black of the rest of his clothes- he had apparently forsaken his robes before crossing the square.

"Depends, I suppose, on what kind of help you come offering. Can you wield a paintbrush or only the word of the Lord? I don't mind you doing both, but you have to be willing to do the first."

The young man smiled. "Suppose I know how to paint with pigment as well as words. Do you need help with the door or is there more inside?"

"I'm all right on the door, thanks," Donna said, nodding to where it was nearly finished. "There's a can of paint and some supplies inside, if you want to help."

The clergyman nodded and disappeared into the bakery, only to pop his head back out again after only a moment. "I'm Father Williams by the way, but you're welcome to call me Rory. Or Father Rory, if you prefer." He pulled his head back inside without saying anything further.

Donna was somewhat surprised that he did not take any opportunity to preach to her, but enjoyed the respite while she had it to finish painting her front door.

When the door was a shining blue gem set in the grey slate of the rest of the town, Donna smiled and closed her paint can. She then entered her shop to check on the priest, and give him his chance to lecture her in exchange for his services.

Inside, Father Rory was balanced on a stool with a wide brush, carefully cutting the paint in around the ceiling. As Donna came in, he turned and smiled at her.

"It's going to be lovely," he said, indicating with the brush that was full of paint the gold colour of the sunset. "It'll look like the place is full of sunlight, no matter how grey it is outside."

Donna was impressed with his perception. "Yes, I think it will. That's the hope, anyway."

"Who chose the pink?" the priest asked, returning to the walls.

"The family who owned the place before me, the Tylers. Jackie, the wife, she loved pink. Always said it was her favourite colour. Her daughter, Rose, loved it too. And Pete loved the pair of them to distraction. Would have done anything for them, and pink walls were a small thing. It was a bakery back then."

"Yes, everyone in town calls it the 'old bakery.' I don't believe I ever met the Tylers."

"Pete and Jackie died three years ago, but you know Rose. She's Rose Stone now, my grandfather says."

"Your grandfather… Wilfred," the young man said, making connections as she spoke. "Yes, I know Rose Stone, I hadn't realized that her parents had died. She… doesn't confide in me."

Donna glanced sharply over at him. Something in his voice said that he wished that the young woman would do so- and Donna wondered at his relationship with the publican's wife. She remembered that the young woman had been a beauty- she hadn't seen her since arriving back in Gallifrey, though she had been the first person Donna had expected to drop in on the shop. She was also the only person that Donna would have considered giving the secret of what the place would become.

The priest continued as though he had said nothing. "Your mother doesn't talk about you. I wouldn't have known that she had a daughter until you arrived even, but I suppose that is the nature of small towns. You don't think to tell someone what everyone already knows, of course. I'm sure it means nothing."

Donna was sure that it didn't- her mother would prefer to pretend that she and her brother did not exist, for they were such disappointments to her- but she did not care to get into the matter with the priest. She was still waiting for him to tell her that she must begin attending church, or reconcile with her mother, or send her grandfather to the home, as her mother kept insisting.

"How long have you been here, Father?"

"Rory," the young man corrected, absently as he thought for a moment and continued to paint. "Seven months, I believe. The Father before me had been here twenty-seven years."

"Father Baker," Donna murmured. She remembered him well. He'd been all angry passion from the pulpit and rigid piety away from it. She could see him still as he had presided over her father's funeral- wispy white hair and shivering jowls, preaching hellfire even as he should have been extolling her father's many virtues. Donna had held her brother's hand and tears had tracked her face that day, and she had never forgiven the old priest.

"How long has it been since last you were in Gallifrey, Ms. Noble?"

"Donna," she corrected.

"Donna then."

"Four years." Donna could remember it clearly. She had come for the anniversary of her father's death, and the day had ended up in a screaming match between her mother and herself. She had not returned again.

"And your mother…" the priest said, tentatively.

"Would prefer that I had never returned," Donna said, sharply.

"I'm sure you can't mean that!"

Donna turned to look at the young man who was also looking at her in shock.

"Seven months," she said. "She's never mentioned me, you said. Has she mentioned my brother?" The priest's widening eyes told her the answer. "We are great disappointments to her. Embarrassments. My grandfather as well. She would prefer, I think, for us to simply disappear and never to have to acknowledge us."

"Then why return?"

Donna stood silent for long enough for Rory to return to his painting, considering the question. After a long time she spoke.

"Because Gallifrey was home once, and I think that's what I'm looking for again. My brother comes to check on our grandfather twice a year, but I was beginning to think… it's time to come home."

Father Rory nodded as though he understood, but Donna wondered how he could when she, herself, didn't quite.

"I think you'll find it will be easier if you can reconcile with your mother."

Finally, Donna smiled. "I think you might be right, but I am too stubborn to give up, even if that can't be done."

She could hear the smile in his next words. "I think you might be." He seemed to think for a long time as they both painted together. "Four years you've been gone. Where have you been?"

"I've been gone for ten years, Father. As for where I've been… everywhere."

And so Donna told him a bit about her travels. She told him of India and China and Japan. She told him of France and Spain. She told him of America and Canada and Peru. She told him of Egypt and Kenya.

Eventually, the room was painted the colour of late-afternoon sunlight.

"It's beautiful." Rory said, looking around in pride.

"It is," Donna agreed.

"I should tell you, before I go, that you are welcome at the church any time. You needn't wait for an invitation."

Donna smiled gently. An afternoon together and she knew that this young man, for all his religious fervour, would understand her next words.

"I should tell you that I find my communion with the divine is better when I'm not in that stuffy old building. But do come back and see me once I'm open. I'll have your favourite."

"My favourite what?"

Donna smiled, mysteriously. "You'll see, Father."

~?~?~?~?~

The next two weeks saw the front door of the old bakery firmly shut and every window covered. A selection of unmarked lorries drove up, and workmen carried crates and bags into the shop under the watchful eye of the ginger proprietress. After they left, she always closed and locked the door behind her, maintaining the mystery of what, precisely, she was doing to the space.

The day before the grand opening, Donna stood on a short stepladder outside of the front of the shop hanging the sapphire-coloured sign to match the door as two women stood on the other side of the square watching her.

She noted the two women- one with skin like café au lait, with the dark hair and eyes to match, the other with skin like cream, and dark-blonde hair that hung limp and lank about her face.

Once the sign was secured, she waved at the two women, inviting them over. The dark-skinned woman turned to the other and there seemed to be some reluctance from her companion, but eventually she grabbed her friend by the hand and pulled her to the front of Donna's shop.

"Here was me thinking everyone in town had been by the shop already," Donna said, climbing down the step ladder to speak to the two girls. "But I haven't met you two yet. I'm Donna, but you probably already knew that unless you've been living under a rock."

The black girl smiled. "Hard to avoid the gossip. I'm Martha, Martha Jones." She held out her hand to shake, and Donna did so without hesitation. "And this is Rose Stone," she continued, indicating her friend.

"Rose Stone, used-to-be Tyler?" Donna asked. "But I've been hoping you'd come by! I knew your mum and dad, and you back when you were a little thing. I thought you might like to see what I've done with the place. Do you want to come in?"

Rose paled noticeably, though Donna wouldn't have thought she could have done.

"I-I can't. I have to go," she mumbled, looking away from both women. "I'll see you later, Martha," she said to the ground, and hurried off.

Both Donna and Martha watched her leave, Donna frowned and Martha bit her lower lip.

"Is she alright?" Donna asked softly.

"She's…" Martha seemed to realize that she was talking to a stranger and made an obvious shift in what she was about to say, "fine. Just tired is all."

Donna pursed her lips but did not refute the younger woman's words. She wondered what she might have been told, were she a friend, and made a mental note to seek out friendship with both of these women.

"What does it mean then," Martha said, changing the subject and glancing up at the sign that Donna had just finished hanging, "Tardis?"

Donna shook herself out of her reverie. "It's a word I learned in South America. It's about how the potential of a person, their imagination, their soul, really, is so much more than their tiny, fragile body would indicate."

Martha thought on this for a long moment. "So it means bigger on the inside?"

Donna grinned. "That's exactly what it means. You're very clever, do you need a job?"

Martha smiled back. "I have one, actually. I'm the midwife."

Donna raised her eyebrows. She could imagine the struggle that the young woman must face in this town in such a position and her estimation of Martha Jones' spine increased.

"So you open tomorrow, is that right?" Martha asked.

"I do, yes."

"Would you mind if I came by? Make sure you have a sale on your first day?"

"I'd love it. I've got your favourite."

Martha frowned. "My favourite what?"

"It's a surprise."

~?~?~?~?~

"Chocolate."

The word whispered through the town. It had been barely past sunrise when the newsprint had disappeared from the plate windows in front of the shop to reveal whole scenes sculpted out of chocolate in different colours.

The sunshine-coloured walls had been bordered in a sea-foam green, hand-painted circular pattern, and there were dark-wood shelves holding delicacies as though they were precious jewels.

As people walked by the front door, the aroma of chocolate and cream and caramel and spice drifted out and beckoned each passer-by into the warm, tempting space.

The first person to accept the invitation was Sarah Jane Smith, a novelist from the outskirts of town. She took a step through the blue door and stopped to stare.

It was like stepping into an alien world- there was nothing like it in all of that stolid, predictable little town, and the novelty when combined with the rich smell of chocolate nearly made her giddy.

"Welcome to Tardis." The voice came from the entryway into the kitchen where Donna Noble stood in a purple skirt, green blouse, and red shoes. "What can I help you with? What's your favourite?"

Sarah Jane simply looked around, a bit overwhelmed. "It all looks so lovely, I wouldn't know where to start!"

Donna grinned. "I've an idea."

She moved over to the counter and pulled out a little mosaicked plate that she spun like a top on the gleaming countertop.

"Look into it," she said as Sarah Jane stepped up to see what she was doing, "and tell me what you see."

The older woman watched the plate for a moment.

"I see... a king- no, a queen- on a throne." She looked up. "Did I get it right?"

"There's no right or wrong, just what you see," Donna said. "I think I know what you'll like though."

Donna bustled over to one of the shelves in the shop and selected a medium-sized box wrapped in gold with a purple ribbon. She brought it to Sarah Jane and handed it to her.

"Here, it's your favourite."

The older woman frowned at the box sceptically. "All right... what do I owe you for it?"

"Taste one," Donna said with a smile. "If it's not your favourite, it's yours for free."

Sarah Jane looked surprised, but agreeably opened the box and removed one of three small chocolate cookies and took a bite. She was first surprised to find that it was soft when she expected it to be crunchy. She then found that it was filled with a spicy currant paste in the middle that played off of the rich chocolate of the cookie without overpowering it. Sarah Jane's eyes fluttered shut and she moaned her pleasure at the flavour.

There was a gasp from the door and both Donna and Sarah Jane turned to find the Countess looking shocked and horrified at what she found inside the shop- though whether it was Sarah Jane's near obscene pleasure at her chocolate treat, or the shop itself was anyone's guess.

"Hello, Mother," Donna said coolly. "Welcome to Tardis. What can I interest you in?"

Sylvia ignored Donna completely. "Ms. Smith, it is Lent!"

Sarah Jane blushed slightly, but met the countess' eyes unflinchingly. "So it is, Countess, and it is my eternal soul, and therefore my concern if I break my Lenten vows. As I have already tried them, I shall have to purchase them or be quite rude." She turned to Donna. "What do I owe you?" she asked again.

Donna named a price that made her mother wince, but Sarah Jane did not blink, merely reached into her handbag for a few pounds and pence and turned them over. She then placed the treats for which she had just paid into the same bag and walked past Sylvia Noble with her head held high.

"Come back soon!" Donna cried after her retreating back.

When she and her mother were alone, Donna turned and placed her hands on her hips, waiting for a lecture that did not come. Sylvia merely gave Donna a cold, angry look and stormed from the shop.


	7. Reverence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Happy Fanfiction Friday, everyone.**
> 
> **To all of you who are enjoying the story and let me know, I love you desperately, and every review makes my day.**

Father Williams sang softly to himself as he swept the walkway behind the church. It was a sweet song- a love song he had learned from an Irish girl one spring before he went to seminary.

"A new addition to the liturgy?"

The voice made Rory jump slightly. He had thought himself alone. He girded himself in the patience and serenity necessary, and turned to face the Countess Sylvia Noble. In many ways she was his patron in Gallifrey. In many others she was his nemesis.

"My apologies, Countess, I thought I was alone. I'm afraid that I love music in all its forms, both sacred and not."

"Have you been to Tardis yet? The old bakery?"

Rory frowned at the change of subject. "I have not. It only opened today, did it not? I had thought to stop in and see how Donna was doing this afternoon as I visited the homebound. Why?"

"She has made it into a chocolate shop." The Countess spat the last two words as though they tasted filthy.

Rory smiled at the thought. It suited the Donna that he had met some weeks before, chocolate. And, considering her time in South America, the origin of chocolate, and her travels across the globe, she might have some impressive ideas on what to do with the stuff.

He caught the Countess' sour expression and schooled his own to neutrality.

"Is that a problem?" he asked.

"It is Lent, Father," Sylvia spat. "It is a time of abstinence and sacrifice. A time of penitence!"

"And it is the responsibility of each individual to choose their sacrifice and maintain their abstinence, is that not also true, Countess? And if they do not, is it not between each person and God alone?"

"It is temptation!" she shouted.

Rory shook his head. "I'm afraid I do not understand your upset. It is just chocolate. Is Donna doing something illegal?"

"It is immoral, and if you will not stand up and say it, I shall write the Bishop and he shall do so."

Rory sighed. It seemed that once a month his patroness wrote the Bishop about something that he was doing wrong. The old man rarely credited her letters, and the young priest thought that he would not in this case either.

"Madam Noble, Bishop Stewart has more things to take up his mind than a candy shop here in Gallifrey, even if it is Lent." _As does the Almighty_ , he thought, but did not say.

"We shall see." With that pronouncement, the countess turned on her heel and left in a cloud of disapproval.

Rory shook his head at her retreating back and bent once again to his sweeping. The Countess' attempts to use the chocolate shop to frighten him had backfired completely. He was far more curious about the place than he had been that morning, and thought he might save the rest of his chores about the building for the evening and start on his rounds sooner rather than later, with a final stop at the new feature on the face of the town.

~?~?~?~?~

Martha Jones stepped into Tardis and, like everyone did, stood for a long moment inside the door to take it all in.

"Martha!" an excited voice came from behind the counter and she found herself suddenly enfolded in a pair of arms and a flurry of ginger hair. "Oh, I'm so glad you came! I was just going to make a cuppa; you can have some with me."

Martha grinned as Donna released her to gesture to a seat at the counter as the older woman disappeared into the back of the shop. She returned a moment later with a tray bearing two cups, a complicated brass pot, a pitcher of cream, and what appeared to be a sugar bowl.

Donna poured a healthy measure of the cream into both cups and was just reaching for the sugar bowl when Martha stopped her.

"I don't take sugar in my tea, thanks."

Donna smiled. "This isn't tea, and it isn't sugar either."

She opened the top to display some red-brown powder which she sprinkled liberally onto the cream. She then poured the thick, dark liquid from the pot. It looked like strong coffee and smelled of…

"Chocolate!" Martha cried in delight.

"Well, it is a chocolate shop, after all," Donna said, stirring the cup and handing it to Martha.

"And is that cinnamon?" Martha asked looking at the spice in the sugar bowl. "Only it looks like it might be rancid."

"Not cinnamon, a chili pepper blend."

"In chocolate?"

Donna grinned and stirred her own cup. "Try it and tell me what you think."

Martha picked up her cup and inhaled the scent. It was both homey and exotic- reminding her at once of late evening cups of cocoa with the Sisters and hot, distant shores. She took a long, slow drink and her eyes popped open to meet Donna's.

"But that's gorgeous," she cried.

Donna laughed merrily, and glanced over Martha's shoulder as someone entered the shop.

"Father Williams!"

The reverend nodded to her. "Ms. Noble, Ms. Jones, a pleasure. I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Not at all, Father," Donna assured him as she gestured to the seat beside Martha. "Can I interest you in a cup of chocolate?"

"I fear not," he said with an apologetic smile. "It is Lent, after all, and my vows…"

"Of course. But I wonder, is it chocolate that you aren't allowed, or sweets?"

Rory's brow furrowed as he considered the question. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Can you have coffee during Lent, Reverend?"

"Yes."

"With sugar and cream?"

"No, just black."

Donna smiled. "I've something I'd like you to taste."

She left for the back of the shop again, and returned carrying a mug full of dark liquid that was redolent of chocolate and spices.

"The Mayans first discovered that cacao was edible centuries ago," Donna explained, handing the cup over to the reverend. "This was ages before the discovery of sugar as we know it. They made a drink like this and drank it all the time. It's made like coffee- the cacao beans are roasted and ground and water is run through them to take on the character. I add cardamom, cinnamon, and clove to mine, but it's otherwise more or less the same as the original recipe. It's called xocoatl, and it translates to 'bitter water.' The myths about the healing properties are nearly innumerable, but the one that I can absolutely attest to, and the reason it's much better than coffee, in my mind, is that it won't upset a sensitive stomach, and can help heal gastritis and other stomach complaints. Menstrual cramps as well." This last was directed at the young midwife who was listening with wide, fascinated eyes.

Rory cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed, and both women looked over at him.

"Sorry, Father," Donna said with a grin.

"Quite all right," he said with a nod. He then took a long, slow sip of the beverage that she had provided him.

It was, as she had warned, bitter. It was not, however, much like coffee at all. For one, the flavour nuances were far more complex than any coffee that Rory had ever had and the layers of spices gave even more dimension to the drink. In addition, it lacked the acidic quality that often gave him stomach complaints when he drank coffee. He wondered if it were luck or skill that had allowed Donna to match him with a beverage that might help soothe his greatest health complaint.

"It's… wonderful," he said on a sigh.

"It's not your favourite," Donna said with a smile, "but that can wait until after Lent. I'll make up a bag of that for you to make in place of your coffee in the morning. Let me know in about a week if your stomach is doing better."

Donna returned after a moment with a bag that she handed to the reverend, stamped with a picture of her bright blue door and the word 'Tardis' in curling script across the top.

Rory thanked her, and Donna then turned her attention to Martha.

"Ms. Martha Jones," she said, consideringly. "No one is allowed to leave Tardis on their first visit without something to take with them so what is your favourite?"

"I…" Martha stuttered. "I don't really know."

Donna continued to look at her carefully, as though reading something in her face. Then, without warning, she swirled out from behind the counter and plucked a small box off a shelf and handed it to Martha.

"That's your favourite. That's my guess."

Martha looked at the box in her hand. "Oh!" she said in surprise. "All right then."

"Go ahead and taste it," Donna said with a grin. "If I'm wrong and it isn't your favourite, you have it for free."

Martha carefully opened the box to find a pair of dark-coloured truffles nestled in a bed of tissue paper with glittering white flakes on top. She removed one and bit in, closing her eyes to allow the flavours to melt on her tongue.

It was bitter chocolate and sweet caramel, all shot through, not with sugar as she had believed the flakes on top to be, but salt, which both cut and enhanced the flavours, binding them all together into a seamless whole.

"Perfect," she said softly, and Donna smiled.

~?~?~?~?~

Tardis had been open for two weeks when Rose finally found the courage to enter the store. Every person who came through the pub mentioned it at least once- it was the only topic of conversation, it seemed.

The Countess Noble had been to every shop and business in town to say how offended she was that her daughter would open a chocolate shop during Lent. Most of the town nodded, but laughed slightly behind her back. They weren't _French_ after all. Though every right-thinking person in town attended church and could say their catechism properly, knew the hymns and mostly stayed awake during Sunday services, they were English, and were sensible about religion. It was only chocolate, after all.

There were a few people of the Countess' mind- Jeanne Poisson, who was a French transplant, the Widow Redfern, the schoolmistress, and Melody Williams, the artist. The four women were greatly respected so, while no one really agreed that there was anything morally wrong with the shop, neither did anyone want to be caught there and earn the ire of the town's matriarchs.

Jimmy had nodded most piously when the Countess had come to issue her warnings, and had laughed the loudest after she had left and the men in the pub had begun to talk again. He laughed both at the piety of the Countess and at the absurdity that anyone would pay good money for candy.

Rose had remained silent, but in a fit of defiance had determined that she would visit the place that had earned Countess Noble's ire, Jimmy's derision, and Martha's approval.

It had taken a week after the decision was made for Rose to find enough scraps of her tattered courage to enter the shop that had once been her whole world. Had it not appeared empty even of its proprietor, she would never have managed it.

For a long moment, she stood inside the door. Her mother, father, and younger self were ghosts in the space, but it was so changed that they were weak- without the power to wound. Mingling with the smell of chocolate and cream, the memories even became sweet.

"Hullo." A soft voice came from the end of the shop that led into the kitchen. It sounded as though the speaker intended not to startle her, but Rose was jumpy as a rabbit and spun to face Donna Noble.

Rose knew that she should politely greet the woman, and opened her mouth to do so, but what came out instead was "you've redecorated."

Donna's lips quirked up, and she asked, "do you like it?"

Rose thought on that for a long moment. Did she like it? Honestly, the answer was 'no.' What she would have liked would be for the walls to still be pink, the air to still smell of flour and bread, her mother and father to still be alive, and for her own self to know nothing of cruelty.

The space was beautiful, however. Much more so than it had been when it was hers, and Rose could not deny it.

"It's lovely," she said.

"Thank you," Donna said, earnestly. She took a step toward Rose and started to speak quickly. "I know you must hate me because it's me here in this shop, and not your mum and dad. Because I'd give all the chocolate in the world to have my dad back, and I've still got my mum- such as that is. So I know it's not much when I say that I'm glad you like it. But I want you to… to stop by any time you like, if you like." Donna stopped abruptly and shook her head. "I think I'm bollocksing this all up, and I'm sorry."

For the first time, Rose's lips lifted just slightly into a ghost of a smile. "No, it's- you're fine. Thank you."

Donna's smile brightened the already bright room, and Rose could not help but return it.

"I've got something for you," Donna said, quickly, moving behind the counter. She sorted through the packages and boxes and came away with one with a pink silk ribbon around it. She set it on the counter and pushed it across toward Rose, who continued to stand in the centre of the shop, unmoving.

"It's… too expensive. I don't waste money," Rose said. Her eyes did not leave the box on the table, however.

"No charge."

Her eyes flew to Donna's face, and there was fire there. "I don't need charity."

Donna shook her head with a small smile. "Not charity, it's a gift. Please?"

"Why?"

"Because I want to be your friend."

"I don't have friends," she whispered, even as she took a step closer to the counter, the gift, and the woman offering her so much more than chocolate.

"You have Martha."

Rose shook her head, her eyes dropping to the floor. "She's the only one. The town didn't want her... there wasn't anyone else."

Donna wanted to weep. She could see how much Martha cared for Rose, but Rose was certain that, given any other choice, Martha would never have befriended her.

She picked up the box with the pink ribbon and walked around the counter. She picked up Rose's small, rough hand and placed the lovely gold box into it, wrapping her fingers around it.

"Tell me what you think of it, once you've tasted it," Donna said, gently. "I'm afraid that I went too heavy on the Cointreau."

Rose looked down at the beautifully wrapped package in her hand, and up again into the warm, green eyes of the woman who was cupping Rose's hand in both of hers. She found, to her surprise, that she was smiling back.

"Rose!" A sharp voice came from the entrance to the shop and both Donna and Rose jumped, dropping hands.

Joan Redfern, schoolmistress and one of the Countess' 'moral authorities' stood in the entryway, glaring at the two women.

Rose had dropped Donna's box when she had startled. She did not stop to pick it up, rather she raced from the shop as though the hounds of Hell were after her.

Donna watched her go, a leaden feeling in her heart. She bent to scoop the package from the floor and straightened to turn to the woman who had interrupted them.

"May I help you, Widow Redfern?"

The schoolmistress frowned at Donna. "She's always been a queer one. Don't go tempting her with a life like yours- she belongs with her husband, as is proper. Whatever it is you think you will be able to make her do, you won't." With that prosaic announcement, the older woman flounced from the shop.

Donna frowned at the box in her hand. It was for Rose, no one else. She would find a way to deliver it.


	8. They Arrive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The Doctor finally arrives in Gallifrey!**
> 
> **I've been thinking of posting the recipes that inspired some of the descriptions in previous chapters on my blog. I'll probably post them in the Xocoatl tag, for any of you who do the Tumblr thing. For any of you who don't and want the recipes, just let me know and I'll figure something out!**
> 
> **I also know that a lot of you haven't seen the movie that this story is loosely based on and, guess what, that is officially a good thing! My glorious BetaBabe and I have had to make a few changes to the timeline of what's happening here to allow for the kind of growth that I want. So, for the handful of you who are familiar with the source material, we're going even farther outside of that story than we had before (if it were even possible!).**
> 
> **As ever, I love reviews, I love you, and I love WhoLockGal (not necessarily in that order).**

On Wednesdays, Tardis closed at noon and Donna spent the afternoon with her grandfather. He was a bright old man- pushing eighty, but still in full command of his wit, whatever Donna's mother seemed determined to believe. He had a 'dickie heart' as he called it, however, and Sylvia Noble regularly insisted that he leave Gallifrey and move to the aged-care home outside of town.

"The Mortuary, they call it," he complained to Donna one Wednesday as he bustled around making tea. "She wants me to eat nothing with salt, nothing with sugar, and nothing with oil. No tobacco, no coffee, nothing! A man might live forever that way, but what's the point?"

Donna merely shook her head and laughed. To her mind, a man of her grandfather's age with his mind still whole could make his own choices for his health and his life. To ask him to discomfort himself in his twilight years was selfish.

She always brought his favourite- old-fashioned chocolate-chip cookies made with real butter and dark chocolate and the pair of them could talk for hours about everything and nothing on those long afternoons.

The Wednesday after Rose came to Donna's shop, she arrived at her grandfather's place hoping to be able to steer him into telling her more about the publican and his wife. Something was rotten there and Donna would not rest until it was uncovered and made right.

She found, however, her usual teacup held only dregs and a plate already scattered with biscuit crumbs.

"Your brother arrived this morning," Wilf told her. "We had tea."

Somehow, the river rats had arrived and the Pirate King had visited before the rumours had even made it to her. Donna was quite impressed.

"I told him you were here."

"Yeah?" Donna said with a grin. "How'd he take that news?"

Wilf smiled. "He was surprised but... resigned. You'll go see him?"

"I've something to pick up from the shop, but I'll do that as soon as I leave here."

"Go then. Go now. I'm fine and you need to see your brother."

"Gramps," Donna warned.

"I'm fine, Donna."

He was, too, she could see that. He looked happier in that moment than he ever seemed to after she'd spent time with him. It had obviously done him good to see Chris.

"All right then, if you're sure. You should come 'round the shop sometime, why don't you?"

As he did every time she suggested it, Wilf shook his head. "You go on now. Give your brother my love."

"I'm sure you gave it to him yourself before he left, but I'll be sure to do that."

~?~?~?~?~

Jack looked up to see a vision in sunshine-yellow descending the slope to the docks where they were moored.

He knew that he and the other river rats were only tolerated in Gallifrey because of Chris' name and connection to that community. They could usually find some small work, and occasionally even a buyer for their crafts, but only if they went into the town itself. No one from the town approached their boats on the river save to tell them they had outstayed their welcome.

"She walks in beauty, like the night," he called out to the woman picking her way over to him, a tray of some sort in her hands. He would shamelessly employ every ounce of his fabled charm to keep her from being too horrible to him and his companions. "Of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meets in her aspect and her eyes."

"Charming," the ginger-haired woman said with a grin, "but I believe Lord Byron intended that one for a dark-haired girl."

Jack flashed his finest grin. "My deepest and most heartfelt apologies."

"For getting the colour of my hair wrong?"

The woman had a cheeky smile and flashing eyes that Jack thought he could lose his heart to quite happily, were he interested in losing his heart to anyone.

"For whatever you're here to accuse us of," he said.

"Have you done anything to deserve accusation?"

Jack shrugged. "Not that I know of."

"Then I'm not here to accuse."

"Here to sell, then? Religion? Salvation? Moral fortitude?"

"Chocolate," she said, holding out her tray which did, in fact, hold chocolates.

He glanced down at the tray in surprise. "Chocolate? That's a new one."

Jack looked this woman up and down. She was a few years younger than he, but not many, and she had a stubborn jaw. There was something in her face that was familiar as well, though he couldn't place his finger on it.

The Doctor had said that they wouldn't be staying in Gallifrey. They would move on as soon as he made certain that his grandfather was well, but he'd returned from tea with Wilf and disappeared into the privacy of his own cabin without a word.

"Well then, miss, I fear I've no money for chocolates, but I can offer you a fair trade."

"Oh?"

"Oh yes," he said, adding his finest rakish grin to the equation. He pulled out the basket of baubles that they had made the day before and tilted it toward her. "Pirate treasure," he said with a stage accent that he hoped would make her laugh.

His hopes were granted as she snorted at the offering.

"Now, now," he chided, "don't laugh. I could get ten pounds each in London for those."

"Then you'd best take them to London," she said.

"Oi," Jack said, employing one of the Doctor's favourite words, "that's quite rude, you know."

"That's me," the woman said with a smile. "Rude-and-ginger."

Suddenly the puzzle pieces fell into place for Jack. Since they had met, the Doctor had regularly called himself rude-and-not-ginger. When Jack had asked him why, the other man would just laugh and shake his head.

Jack took a step forward. Now that he was looking for it, the similarity between this woman and his best friend became obvious. She was too young for the mother, so she must be...

"Donna? Donna Noble?"

"My reputation precedes me."

Jack felt a grin tug at his mouth even as his stomach dropped. Donna, in Gallifrey, meant that Chris' premonition had been correct. Everything was different now.

"Doctor," he called over his shoulder. After a moment without answer, he shouted again. "Doc!"

Several people appeared on their own boats, Mickey and Adric both popped their heads up, and Ian and Barbara's little girl, Susan ran over to him and started tugging on his trouser leg.

Jack scooped her into his arms and gave an exasperated sigh as the Doctor remained elusive. He was about to shout again when the woman beside him did so instead.

"Oi, Spaceman. Get out here so I can take a look at you."

Finally the face that Jack had been scanning for- bracketed by overlarge ears and defined by a slightly hawkish nose- appeared.

"Gramps told me to expect you," the Doctor said, by way of a greeting, even as he unfolded himself from under the awning on his own boat.

"He told me to come find you," Donna responded. "Come here, you lump, I've got your favourite."

The Doctor's eyebrows jumped, creasing his wide forehead, but he ambled over to her- curiosity was, after all, his greatest vice.

When he reached her side, Donna plucked a truffle from her tray and held it out to him. He merely looked from it to her in surprise.

"Go on then, it's your favourite."

The Doctor shrugged and plucked the sweet from his sister's fingers and popped it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, rolling the flavours over his tongue thoroughly, eyes closed. Several people had come out to watch the show and Jack felt his jaw slacken as he watched the focus that the Doctor gave to an ordinary sweet. It tightened his stomach in an old, familiar way.

"Brilliant," the Doctor declared after a very long time. "Molto bene." He opened his eyes and met Donna's. "But not my favourite."

Donna's mouth popped open in shock.

"It's been a long time, sister dearest. Maybe you've forgotten."

For a timeless moment that stretched tight like a wire between them, Donna and Chris Noble stared at each other. Then, in an instant, the tension snapped, and both were laughing. Chris pulled the tray from Donna's hands and shoved it into Jack's, then swept her up into a hug.


	9. Stone's Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Holy exposition, Batman, it's the moment you've all been waiting for!**
> 
> **If any of you have been looking for the recipes that I promised last week... well... sorry. I've been a bit distracted and have not actually posted them. I'll try to manage that this weekend.**
> 
> **Happy Halloween, for any of you who celebrate it, and happy Friday for any of you who don't!**

"What are you doing here?" Chris asked as he and Donna sat across from each other in the dingy pub where they had gone for dinner.

After he'd set her down from the hug, Donna had scolded him and told him he'd been acting like a child, but he could tell that she was quite pleased. She'd then handed out the rest of the truffles to the children of his crew and, without consulting him, told everyone she was taking him away for dinner.

The Doctor kept his smile to himself. He knew his sister would see his deep pleasure as him laughing at her. The truth was that he wanted to shout at the change in her.

Ten years ago, when Donna had discovered Lance, her fiancé, was betraying her, he had been afraid that she would break. All of her fire had seemed to vanish in an instant and for days she had done nothing but weep and despair.

It had been their father who had pulled her out of it. He'd spent two hours in her room with her, the door closed, and when he and Donna had emerged, she had been able to attempt to smile, and she had plans to see the world.

At their father's funeral, Chris had feared that the travelling hadn't helped at all. She was pale and drawn and red-eyed, just as she had been after Lance. He had been much the same, however, and could forgive it.

Seeing her now, cheeky and strong and clever, he could see that their father had been right.

Donna had led him to the shop that he remembered to be a bakery and opened the door to the overwhelming scent of chocolate. Chris vaguely remembered the baker and his wife dying a few years past, and that something had happened with their daughter, but he avoided gossip in Gallifrey like the plague. He wanted nothing more tying him to the place than he already had.

His sister had put her tray away, then turned and asked him what he wanted for dinner. When he had answered with 'chips' she had laughed and told him that some things never changed.

They had found themselves at Stone's Place, a pub that Chris occasionally visited when he was in Gallifrey and the memories and pain of the place needed dulling. The food was decent, even if Chris preferred to keep himself distant from most of the clientèle.

Donna frowned at his question. She was the only woman in the place save for the big-eyed waif who was both serving food and tending the bar, but Donna seemed unperturbed by the fact.

"The way things ended with Lance highlighted just how small and cloistered life in Gallifrey was, you know?" she said, slowly. "You'd left ages ago, and when you came back it was with all these stories about the world, about helping people, about making a difference."

Chris grunted. This was Donna's story, and he chose not to argue the point that a soldier usually did more harm than good anywhere they went. It would only lead to a fight.

"And then Lance and that... woman. Some of the things he said, Chris- about how I'd never seen anything outside of Gallifrey, how I was so narrow and limited- they hurt. I wanted to give up then."

"I remember," he murmured.

"Mother had always said that I'd have to get married, and Lance was the only one who might have me as I was so opinionated and peculiar. When that ended, I was sure I'd be alone and unwanted for the rest of my life."

Chris nearly growled at the thought of their mother letting his extraordinary sister believe such things. His relationship with his mother had always been tense because of her expectations for him- become squire and Mayor and moral authority in Gallifrey, as the Counts Noble had done for time immemorial. He had wanted none of it, and had disappeared to enlist the moment he'd heard the distant sounds of guns on the Continent. He'd lied about his age and name and been issued a gun and a sense of patriotism- both on loan for the duration of his service- to supplement his own inherent sense of duty and justice.

"But then Dad told me that marriage was just one part of life- it wasn't all there was. Yes, it makes people happy and helps them keep from being lonely, but it's just one option. He told me I should get away from Gallifrey. Find some silver lining in what Lance had done and learn who I was when I was alone. I did, and it was amazing."

Their conversation was interrupted then by the waitress. It had, really, been too long before she had given the pair of them her attention, but Chris had been watching her manage the entire pub- pulling pint after pint, pouring whiskey after whiskey, taking shouted orders sprinkled with curses and insults from a table of men playing cards- and he could not fault her inattention to them.

"Good evening, how may I help you," the girl asked, not meeting their eyes.

"Hello, Rose," Donna said, gently, as though to a frightened animal rather than a young woman.

Chris raised his eyebrows in surprise. Though he knew from Wilf that Donna had been in town for nearly two months, she was not the sort to frequent a pub like this. That she knew this girl (who appeared to be combination barmaid, waitress, and chef) enough to call her by her Christian name and attempt to engage her when she clearly did not want to be engaged was unexpected. The Doctor observed the young woman more closely- perhaps he could determine what his sister found so intriguing.

The young woman (Rose, he corrected himself- soft, pale Rose) flickered her eyes over Donna before looking down again. "Hello Ms. Noble."

"I don't know if you've met him before, but this is my older brother as well," Donna continued, gesturing to Chris.

Again that flickering glance before her eyes returned to the ground. This time, however, there was a slight pink flush to her cheeks when she nodded. "Sir."

"Do you know what you would like to eat, or can I bring you some drinks?" She seemed nearly desperate to get away, like an animal caught in a trap.

"Shepherd's pie and chips and an ale, if you don't mind," the Doctor said, cutting off Donna's next foray into sociability.

Donna frowned at him, but the golden eyes of the young woman were relieved.

"I'll have the same, but without the chips, thanks," Donna said.

Rose nodded and vanished from their table.

Donna looked ready to start fighting with him about the girl, but his next question put her back on track.

"I understand why you left Gallifrey, Donna, and I'm glad that travelling seems to have suited you, but you're back now. Why?"

Donna shook her head. "New adventure- the one that's day to day. Different type of saving people too. Seemed like any time I helped someone before, I'd just get up and leave right after- never see what happened next, never stay for the cleanup. Just move on."

Chris nodded- this he understood completely.

"It's a very no-consequences way of living and I guess... I want the consequences now. I want to stay put and see how things grow."

"But why Gallifrey?"

"Gramps, mostly, but also Mum. I think it's time one of us tried fixing things with her, and once Gramps goes..."

"Bite your tongue."

"Once he goes, she'll be alone. We don't get on, but I hate to think of that for her."

Chris sighed. She was right- though he'd never admit it aloud to her. He was saved from responding by Rose appearing with their drinks.

"Thank you, Rose," Donna said.

The girl nodded and vanished again. The commands from the card-players were growing progressively more demanding and abusive with each passing round of whiskey that she provided to them. Some of the things that were said made even Chris wince. Rose seemed not even to hear them, just brought tray after tray of liquor at their calls.

"So part of this new domestic adventure is befriending the girl who runs the pub?" he asked his sister after taking a long draught of the beer in his glass.

"She doesn't run it, it's her husband's place," Donna corrected.

Why, Chris wondered, did the word 'husband' in conjunction with the bar-tending waif turn his beer into vinegar in his mouth?

"Husband? Someone else works here? Well where is he? It looks like she's on her own, and it's too much for her."

"He's at the card table, the blonde one on the left with the filthy mouth."

The Doctor glanced over and found the young man- wavy blonde hair that fell over his light green eyes, regular features, and boyish looks- and was oddly angry to find that it was the card-player who was tossing the most insults and curses at the poor waitress.

Chris ran his hand over his own dark, short-cropped hair. Had he been trying, he thought he could not have found a man who was more physically his opposite with his big ears and nose, short hair, and sharp cheekbones. There was nothing boyish about him. Nothing pretty.

Why it mattered, he could not say.

"My shop used to be her parents' bakery," Donna continued, unaware of her brother's internal conflict. "I remember her parents, and her as a little girl. She's changed a lot, and not for the better." Donna took a long drink of her beer as well and continued. "After her parents died, it was Mother who made her sell up. The Tyler's were in debt to her, and she insisted that Rose pay up immediately. She had to marry so she wouldn't end up destitute."

Chris frowned, a picture coming together in his mind that was not pretty. A coerced marriage. A changed woman. A cruel husband.

The woman in question appeared then, two plates of food in her hands.

"Shepherd's pie," she said, setting one plate in front of Donna, "and shepherd's pie and chips." She placed the second plate before the Doctor.

"Thank you, Rose," Chris said, beginning to understand his sister's fascination with the woman.

Again, her cheeks pinked, and she glanced at him quickly from under her thick, dark lashes.

"You're welcome, Count."

"No, no, don't call me that," Chris said, shuddering at the title.

For the first time, Rose really looked at him and for an instant he was struck by the shining gold of her eyes. There was a true pirate's treasure there.

"I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"Don't call me Count. I hate it. You can call me Doctor, if you like."

Donna snickered, but Rose did not even seem to notice. "Doctor? Doctor what? Doctor Noble?"

"No, just the Doctor," he said.

"The Doctor?"

"Hello," he said, giving her a grin and a wave.

Rose blinked and the corners of her mouth twitched in the infancy of a smile.

"Is that supposed to sound impressive?" she asked, and there was a bare breath of laughter in her voice.

"A bit, yeah."

And now it was a smile- no hint or ghost or suggestion, but a true, unambiguous smile. It was small, to be sure, but something in Chris sang to see it on her face.

"I think you're full of it," she said, and the golden of her eyes was sparkling.

"A bit, yeah," he said.

That did it. Her smile bloomed like her namesake flower, bright and wide across her face, baring her straight white teeth and displaying her pink tongue that was caught between them.

The force of that smile acted on the Doctor like a punch to the solar plexus. He suddenly found himself unable to breathe, to think, to move, to do anything more than continue to smile at this woman who was bound to another man as though she were the most incredible thing that he had ever seen. He could not be certain that she was not precisely that.

"Rose," a harsh voice sliced through the moment like a sword. "Get back to work, you dozy cow!"

The smile was gone from her face as though it had never been, the only evidence of its passing was Chris Noble's heart beating double-time.

When she left, Chris took a long, deep breath to attempt to calm himself, and then lifted his eyes to meet his sister's. Donna was looking at him with a peculiar expression on her face. Were he pressed Chris might have called the look 'speculation.'

Neither spoke about the interlude, but ate their food and paid. When Donna left a small box wrapped in gold with a pink silk ribbon on the table, Christopher said nothing.


	10. Tempering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **The outpouring of love for both Rose and Chris last week was quite overwhelming. You are all absolutely lovely.**
> 
> **I am now going to take that goodwill that I have built with you all and completely destroy it.**
> 
> **This is it: the big, bad chapter that I've been terrified of actually publishing. This is where the violence, language, abuse, and even suicide warnings come into play.**
> 
> **Please, please, please, don't read anything that makes you uncomfortable. I love you all and I want you well much more than I want you to read my story.**
> 
> **If, when you've finished this chapter, you don't completely hate me, I have posted another chapter to a different story called A Season Between. It is the fluffiest piece of fluff that I have ever written. I know a lot of you don't read my crossover story, and with good reason, but it's Mickey and Martha and actually doesn't reference the crossover much at all so... if you need an antidote, that would be my recommendation.**
> 
> **I love you all, and wish you the best of Fanfiction Fridays.**

In the kitchen, Rose took a deep, steadying breath. She'd seen the man before a time or two, but hardly once every six months if that often, and had assumed he was a drifter. He had always been polite to her, in a distant way, and she had never guessed that he was the absent heir to the town.

She'd always thought him intriguing- his face was not pretty, but it was compelling. He was attractive- like a magnet to iron filings- she was drawn to him and had been since first she had laid eyes on him.

He'd been a stranger- a face she could close her eyes and imagine on the rare nights that Jimmy crawled atop her and rode out his completion between her thighs, breath sour with drink and hands far too rough.

Now he was a man. A man with a name ( _Chris Noble, her mind supplied from bits of gossip and a vague memory of the old Count's death_ ). A man with a family ( _the Countess' son, she thought with a shudder; Donna's brother was the comforting response_ ). A man with a sense of humour ( _the Doctor indeed; He thought he was so impressive_ ). A man who had made her smile- something that no man had done in three years ( _that sparkle of blue eyes, and that wide, impossibly beautiful grin on his slightly daft face_ ).

A man who had made her heart skip by smiling at her. By talking to her. By seeing her.

The door to the kitchen opened with a crash, letting the ambient noise of the full pub into the quiet kitchen.

Rose jumped and spun at the interruption only to find her husband standing in the doorway, teeth bared, face white, eyes bloodshot and glaring, hands already clenched into fists.

"Where is he, Rose?" Jimmy hissed at her.

Rose's blood went cold. Jimmy yelled. He shouted and blustered and pushed and hit. When he whispered- when he became quiet and cold and calculating- then he was most dangerous. When he was like this, Rose was not in danger of bruises and split lips, but of broken bones, cigarette burns, and being threatened (and even cut) with a knife.

Jimmy advanced, and Rose stepped back, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable.

"Is he here? Did he come back to my pub to fuck you in my place of business? He's going to be sadly disappointed in you, you know that? She's worthless in bed," he said, cruelly, as he threw open the door to the pantry as though he expected someone to be inside.

"Or maybe you were going to wait until I was asleep, eh Rosie?" He continued stalking toward her, taking a roundabout route through the kitchen as he moved ever closer. "Leave our marriage bed? The bed that I gave you? Leave the roof that I work every day to keep over your head? Is that what you would do? So that you could fuck some drunken bastard?"

"I-I-I don't..." Rose stammered. "I don't know what you're talking about, Jimmy."

He held out a hand and uncurled his fist around what he held. There was a smallish, gold box, the corners crumpled, the silk ribbon creased and wilted from the sweat of Jimmy's palm.

"It's not… that's not," Rose said, recognizing the box from Donna.

"How long, Rose?" Jimmy growled, and he was much closer now and Rose was backed into the corner. "How long have you been doing it, eh? Act like it's a trial to spread your legs for your husband but you'll keep that filthy cunt of yours warm for some big-eared drunk? You're mine by God and law and I won't have it, Rose."

He was there now, caging her in with his hands in either side of her head. Rose trembled and stammered as she attempted to choke out an explanation, but he was beyond listening, beyond reasoning, beyond anything but his own fury and desire for retribution for imagined wrongs.

Jimmy's hands closed around her throat.

"No. No. NO!" Rose's voice rose to a scream just before his fingers closed and cut off her air.

"You will never betray me again, do you understand me, you filthy cunt?"

Rose's hands scrabbled at Jimmy's wrists as he pushed harder on her throat, nearly lifting her off her feet as he continued to choke her. Her fingernails scraped over his skin, but she was already beginning to see black around the edges of her vision, and she knew she'd done no damage.

"You're _mine_ , not his. You're _nothing_ without me." Jimmy was shouting now, screaming his rage into her face as Rose felt herself losing consciousness.

Rose had no air left and, hard as she tried she could not gasp another breath. Without even willing it, her right knee lifted and, without aiming, found the apex of Jimmy's legs. His eyes widened and his grip loosened, and he crashed to his knees in front of her.

Rose gasped a breath and found that her legs could not hold her either- she also crashed to the floor, coughing and wheezing, all strength gone from her.

"You fucking bitch," Jimmy roared.

Rose could see him coming toward her with his fists. He would rain down pain on every part of her with his fists, with his hard boots, with slaps and hair-pulling. He would scream abuse and condescension at her, calling her names and telling her everything about her that was horrible and base.

She could feel unconsciousness tickling the edges of her mind and gave into it willingly. He would hurt her, but she would not feel it. He would scream, but she would not hear it. She hoped, in those last moments as she felt the first of the blows hit her torso, that she did not wake.

~?~?~?~?~

The Noble siblings walked in silence through the quiet, dark town, both consumed with their own thoughts.

When they reached the blue door of the bakery with the peculiar name, Donna finally spoke.

"Will you still be here in the morning?"

Christopher startled and looked at her. Though the words themselves had been nearly accusatory, he could see vulnerability in her eyes. He had left her before, in the dark of night, and she did not trust him not to do so again.

"Yeah," he said with a half-smile. "I won't leave without saying goodbye to you and Gramps."

"Swear it?" she asked.

Chris grinned and nodded. They both held up their right hands and spat onto their own palms, then extended them to one-another to shake, as they had always done as children when making an unbreakable pact.

"That's an oddly disgusting thing to do," Donna mused as they released.

Chris shrugged. "We were children. Children can be a bit disgusting."

"S'pose so," she agreed. "Well, goodnight then."

"Goodnight, Donna," he whispered as she closed and locked the vivid blue door behind her.

Chris shoved his hands in his pockets and resumed walking. He'd intended to return to his boat, his crew, his home, but he found that he couldn't quite stomach the thought of settling in with a book, or even seeking Jack out to talk. He felt restless, but not the ordinary sort that told him it was time to get away from a place. His feet didn't itch, but it was like a pressure between his shoulder-blades. The feeling that he needed to do _something_ \- it was both extremely specific and painfully vague and it made Chris want to growl.

Finally, he decided to return to the pub. Perhaps a drink of something stronger than ale and another chance to watch the girl whose smile flickered behind his eyelids with every blink would calm him.

By the time he arrived back, the card game was down a player. It appeared that the publican was finally doing his job rather than leaving it all to his wife's (admittedly capable) hands.

Chris took a seat at the end of the un-manned bar where he could see the entire room and keep his back to the wall. It had been 15 years since the war had ended, but one did not simply stop being a soldier because the guns had quieted.

As the bar remained unmanned and the noise in the pub continued unabated, the itch between his shoulder-blades became more intense. Chris had the odd feeling that if he could see Rose it would go away. Even if she failed to smile at him- did nothing but pour him a drink and move on- he thought it would help.

He sat for some five minutes, twitching and fidgeting at the bar, waiting for her to appear. No one else seemed to notice her absence, or Jimmy's. No one seemed to care.

He had just convinced himself that he needed to leave- needed to return to his boat and forget the girl with the beautiful smile from the dingy pub, needed to say goodbye to his sister and grandfather first thing and move on in the morning, needed to go and return to his life as he knew it- when his sharp ears picked up a noise.

Jack was always laughing that the Doctor could hear anything with his oversized ears, but for once he was pleased that his hearing was so acute when he heard a high voice cry out "No!" from the direction of the kitchen.

Chris straightened and listened hard, and after a moment he heard more.

"You're _mine_ , not his. You're _nothing_ without me."

It sounded very much like the voice of the man who had been playing cards. Chris glanced around the room, but no one else seemed to have heard or cared. The place wasn't overly loud, but no one seemed to be interested in seeing what the issue was.

After another long moment, there was more.

"You fucking bitch."

That did it for Chris. He knew controlled anger better than anyone, and what he had heard was not. It was out-of-control, feral, and wild. That was the sound of a man who would kill, and the Doctor could not allow it to happen.

He jumped from his seat at the bar and charged through the other patrons to the kitchen door, shoving it open to find the blonde man with the cruel tongue laying into a small figure prone on the ground.

"Oi!" Chris cried out, and grabbed the younger man by the scruff of his shirt to pull him away. The other man was several inches shorter, less broad at the shoulder, and significantly less steady on his feet than Chris, who found him an easy opponent.

He turned to look and appeared to recognize Chris. "You bastard!" he shouted, and made a clumsy attempt to hit Chris' face, which he dodged.

The next swing was aimed at his stomach. Chris grabbed the younger man's wrist and held it firmly. He made another attempt with his left hand, but this one was even clumsier, and the Doctor easily stopped it as well. He then shoved the man away from him.

"Look, I don't want to hit you, mate," Chris said, holding up his hands. "Just lay off…"

The other man let out a soundless roar and stumbled toward him, and Chris gave up on diplomacy. He grabbed the front of the other man's shirt and forcibly steered him into the pantry, shoving him back and slamming the door in his face. The door had a hook latch on the outside that Chris flicked into place before turning on the victim of the young man's fury.

When he recognized Rose on the ground, apparently unconscious, with her lip split, her dress torn, and the beginnings of what would be several spectacular bruises on her face and neck, Chris re-considered his decision not to pummel her husband into the ground.

"Rose?" he said, kneeling beside her and cupping her face in his hand, brushing a light thumb over her reddened cheekbone.

She gave no response, which frightened him as much as anything. He checked her as best he could without being overly familiar, and glanced at her pupils. They were the same size, and he could find no broken bones, so Chris scooped the small woman into his arms and carried her out the back door of the pub, even as the pounding started in earnest from the inside of the pantry.


	11. Defend Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Since I, apparently, didn't scare you off with the last chapter, let's see how this one goes for you.**
> 
> **I don't say it often enough, but I deeply love every one of you who reads this, and I hope you're having a lovely time here. I am, but I'm kind of odd that way.**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday!**

Donna was rubbing moisturising crème into the skin of her face preparatory to going to bed when she heard a crash at the front door to her shop and a voice calling her name in a panic.

Her brother's voice, unless she was mistaken.

Donna raced down the steps and, through the glass windows in her lovely blue door, she could see Chris looking more frightened than she'd ever seen him before.

She fumbled open the lock and then the door and, almost before she'd gotten it open, Chris was shouldering in and for the first time Donna realized that he had a person in his arms, carrying them bridal-style. After a moment, she realized who it was.

"Rose," she breathed.

"He beat her unconscious," Chris growled.

"He...?" Donna said.

"Her rat-bastard of a husband."

Donna's eyes went wide for a moment, then narrowed in anger.

"Bring her up," she said, and spun to lead the way up to the bedroom that she was not using- the bedroom that had been Rose's own in her youth.

Donna led the way to a small bedroom and opened the door. Chris stepped in, careful not to knock any part of his precious burden against the walls and doorframe. She had moved a few times as he had carried her across the square- tiny noises of pain that set a knife to his heart- before settling back into full unconsciousness again. The noises of pain hurt him, but her silence terrified him.

He laid her down on the bed, brushing her dark-blonde hair away from her face where the redness and swelling was beginning to be more obvious. She would be all-over bruises in a few hours, he knew, and she would hurt for days- maybe weeks, but she was asleep now. He hoped she was feeling no pain.

"Doctor," she muttered, eyelids fluttering. They did not open, and her breathing deepened, but something in Chris's heart tightened for a moment.

Donna watched as her brother knelt beside the bed and brushed gentle hands over the face of the young woman there. Chris was the sort of man who would save a woman, yes, but not the sort of man who would then touch her so tenderly. Not unless there was some purpose to it.

Despite the severity of the situation, Donna could feel a smile sneaking over her face. The great Doctor, brought down by a pretty face in a pub. How the mighty had fallen.

"Chris," Donna said, low enough not to startle him. He startled anyway, turning to look at her as though he'd forgotten she was there. It was another thing that Donna stored away to rib him about when things were less dire. "What happened?" she asked, instead.

Chris brushed hand gently across Rose's forehead one last time, and then rose to go to his sister.

"I heard yelling in the kitchen at the pub..."

"You went back there?" Donna interrupted.

"I thought I'd have another drink. It might help me sleep."

Donna pursed her lips and frowned, but did not pursue that avenue for the moment. "All right then, you went back to Stone's and heard…"

"Yellin'. No one else seemed to notice, but it got loud and…" he hesitated and glanced back at the sleeping form behind him, "cruel enough that I decided to check it out. Went back into the kitchen and found that bloke… Timmy."

"Jimmy," Donna corrected.

"Whatever. I found him whaling on someone- didn't see who it was- who was already down. I pulled him off, and he took a swing at me too. I shoved him into the pantry and locked the door. Then I saw it was Rose he'd been after and I… I brought her here. It was the only place I could think of."

"Did anyone see you go?"

Chris's brow wrinkled at the note of urgent fear in Donna's voice. "I don't know. Could have done, I suppose. Why?"

Donna gave an exasperated sigh. "Tardis isn't exactly the Tower of London, brother dearest. How am I to keep her safe if he comes here looking for her? You couldn't knock him flat or something?"

The Doctor shook his head, but could not deny the truth of her words. It would not be difficult for Rose's husband to figure out where she'd gone- it was a small town, after all, and he was not unknown in it.

"I could… take her down to the boats?" Chris suggested. He winced at even the thought of Rose's injuries in a hammock, but if it would keep her safe…

"No, she needs a bed," Donna said, reading his mind. "She can stay here, but _you_ have to keep us safe, got that, Dumbo?"

Chris refrained from wincing at the childhood nickname (Donna had always been fond of unflattering pet names for him), and nodded.

"Right. That's me off then."

"Were you listening to me?" Donna followed him down the steps, and from her tone the Doctor could tell that, were Rose not sleeping upstairs, she'd be shrieking. "I said you needed to protect us. You can't leave."

Chris turned at the bottom of the stairs- a soldier's about-face that nearly put Donna on her backside as she ran into his broad chest.

"I'm off to get Jack. Mickey and Jake too, if they'll come. They're going to help me keep Rose and you safe. So you stay behind locked doors until I get back."

Chris moved toward the door, but was arrested on the threshold by Donna's voice again.

"Martha. I need Martha."

He turned. "Who's Martha?"

"Rose's friend. And she's a doctor. A _proper_ doctor."

"I am a proper doctor!"

Donna rolled her eyes, and Chris decided not to pursue the argument any further.

"Fine," he said with a huff. "Where does she live, I'll get her. I don't want you leaving Rose alone up there."

Donna pulled a piece of paper intended for wrapping purchases and drew a small, simple map to where Rose's friend lived.

"Send one of the boys to fetch her. Maybe Jack. I think she'd like Jack."

"Everyone likes Jack," the Doctor said, sounding resigned. "I'll have someone get your doctor and be back as soon as I can, all right? Stay with her, won't you?"

"Of course."

~?~?~?~?~

"Two pair," Mickey said, setting his cards down so Jack could see. "Looks like your winning streak is over, Captain Cheesecake."

He leaned forward to scoop the pot, but Jack laid a hand on his arm.

"That's Beefcake," he said with his sparkling grin, showing Mikey the four tens he held in his hand. Jake groaned and threw his cards to the table and Mickey sat back looking dejected.

"Don't be too sad boys. Just means drinks are on me once we get out of Gallifrey," Jack said.

"I think you mean they're on me, Captain." A royal flush was set down, and Jack's jaw dropped.

Amelia Pond was fairly new on the crew; they'd picked her up at the end of the winter. The Doctor had been hesitant- she was slim and leggy with nearly waist-length red hair and the type of face that made men forget their own names- he'd claimed she would be a distraction. Two days after she'd joined up, however, while they'd still been docked for the winter but preparing to head out again, Amy had happened upon the Doctor cursing up a storm while working on an engine for one of the boats.

The Doctor could feel her presence as she sat down beside him. His new crewmate (for as long as she lasted, and the Doctor couldn't help but feel it wouldn't be long) was sitting tailor-fashion, elbows on her knees and face in her hands, watching him as though he were the most interesting thing in the world. It gave him an itch behind his right eye, but he strove to ignore it, hoping that she would go away when it became clear he would not stop cursing and growling.

A quarter of an hour later she was still there and the itch behind the Doctor's eye had grown into a fully-fledged headache. He couldn't focus on his work, and he wasn't getting anywhere anyway, so he gave it up as a bad job, pulled himself out from under the engine, and finally faced the woman who had been watching him so intently.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, rubbing his right eye to hopefully alleviate the ache there.

"Trying to learn something," she said.

He stopped rubbing and glared at the young woman before him. "Learn something, eh? From me or about me?"

She shrugged and an impish smile bloomed over her face. "Either one, but I get the feeling that learning _about_ you would be better done by seducing Jack."

The Doctor snorted a laugh and leaned back against the side of the boat. It seemed he was in this conversation, for better or worse.

"Wouldn't get anything out of Jack, even if you did seduce him. You'd probably both have fun trying though."

"I could seduce you instead."

The Doctor looked her over. Miles of long leg encased in slightly-too-tight trousers, a man's shirt unbuttoned just one button too far over her breasts, putting on display her lack of undergarments, lovely red hair, and a light Scottish accent that turned even the most innocuous phrase into a sultry purr.

"No," he said with a shake of his head. He could see the appeal, academically, but she did nothing for him. Perhaps it was the ginger hair, or maybe it was the outspoken personality, but she reminded him a bit of his sister.

Amelia seemed unperturbed by his brush-off. She just shrugged. "Thought you might say that. Jack says you're a genius- the smartest person he's ever known- but that he's never seen you with a lady. Or a gentleman for that matter, he was quite clear."

The Doctor couldn't help but chuckle at that. Leave it to Jack.

"He never learned the meaning of the word 'subtle,' so he doesn't know where to look."

That seemed to catch Amelia's interest. "So there have been ladies? Or gentlemen, I won't tell the vicar."

The Doctor did not answer the implied question. "Twenty years Jack's known me. You think, in all that time that I've never… _danced_?"

"But not with me?"

"No gingers. It's a hard and fast rule."

She flashed a grin worthy of Captain Jack himself. "I like hard and fast, but not rules."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You're spending too much time with Jack."

"Nah. If anything he's learning from me."

The Doctor nearly groaned at that. Two Jacks on his crew? It might kill him.

He had to admit that he was fairly impressed with Amelia, however. Most people- women particularly- were put off by his personality. He was too abrupt, too rude, and too grouchy. She, however, was still there and giving as good as she got.

There was one thing he needed to make clear, however.

"Look, Pond, whatever you'd like to do, and whoever you'd like to do it with is fine with me. My crew doesn't answer to anyone but themselves as far as sex goes. But if you become a distraction, or you bother someone who's said 'no,' I'll leave you behind faster than you can say Raxacoricofallapatorius."

"I'm not sure I _can_ say… whatever it is you just said."

The Doctor remained serious. "You understand me though?"

Amelia nodded. "Of course. I've no need to push someone who doesn't want me," she continued with a wink.

The Doctor shook his head, but he found he couldn't help but like this young woman, in spite of himself.

"So tell me what had you cursing and huffing in that engine," Amelia said, after a moment.

The Doctor sighed. "Over the winter a hedgehog nest got into the engine, and I can't get them to leave. No matter how loud I bang on it, they just burrow in deeper. We need to leave in the next two days, and if I can't get them out, they'll burn up as soon as the engine turns on."

"Oh gods," Amelia blasphemed.

The Doctor nodded. "It's worse than just that too. This is Ian and Barbara's, and if their little Susan is about when the engine goes on… It'd be horrible for her. She's an empathetic thing."

Amelia nodded slowly, her brow furrowed in thought.

"Have you tried coaxing them out, rather than scaring them?" she asked.

The Doctor frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

Oddly, that caused Amelia to laugh.

Not twenty minutes later, Barbara, Susan, and Amelia were cooing over the tiny hoglets that were drinking from the saucer of cream that the women had set out. The Doctor and Ian looked on in surprise and indulgence respectively.

Amelia remained with the crew, asking everyone to call her Amy the day after they returned to the river.

As she scooped the largest pot of the game toward herself to the resounding groans of the rest of the players, Jack almost wished the Doctor had left her behind.

"What's the matter, Captain?" she drawled. "Not used to being beaten by a girl?"

"Not with witnesses," he said with a grin and a wink.

Amy threw back her head and laughed.

"Is everyone tapped, or can we go another hand?" Jack asked as Amy calmed herself.

"I'm afraid you're all tapped out," issued a voice from the darkness.

The entire table turned to watch the Doctor enter their little circle of lamplight. One look at his face, and Jack snapped to attention- he recognized the expression that the Doctor was wearing from the War. In his head, he'd always called it "the oncoming storm."

"What's happened?" Jack asked briskly.

"There's trouble in town. I need some men to come help me keep my sister and her friends safe." He glanced around at Mickey and Jake, both of whom nodded and rose. When Amy did the same, he raised an eyebrow at her. "You think you're coming as well?" he asked blandly.

"I don't think, I know," she said. "If you think you need the rest of 'em, that's fine too. I don't mind them coming, but I'm easily worth two men."

Jack and the Doctor shared a glance, and Jack was pleased to see a small amount of tension lift from his friend's face. Not enough to qualify as a smile, but sufficient for Jack's pulse to slow to manageable levels.

"Go on and get what you think you need then," the Doctor said with a nod. As everyone dispersed into the blackness, he called out, "no guns though."

Jack and Amy glanced at each other, and together agreed to ignore the directive.

Jack slid his pistol into the back of his trousers and a knife into the top of his boot. He put another at his waist and then pulled the wool greatcoat he'd won off an RAF flyboy back in the war over the whole thing.

He emerged to find that he was the first one done and approached the Doctor again.

"What's happening, Doctor?" he asked, voice low.

Chris glanced about before answering, keeping his own voice too low to carry.

"There was this girl- this woman. I caught her husband slapping her around and I… put a stop to it. I took her to Donna's place. There's a chance the bastard might come looking for her there, I don't know for sure if anyone saw me, so I agreed to keep Donna safe at her place. She says I should have knocked him flat."

"Yeah, you should have done," Jack said. "A man's not a man who beats a woman or a child."

The Doctor merely grunted his assent. The two men stood silent for a long moment before the Doctor seemed to remember something.

"Oh… there's something I need you to do."

"Yeah?"

"Rose… this girl… she's got a friend in town who's a doctor, apparently. A proper one, Donna says. I need you to go collect her and bring her to Donna's place to help look after Ro- the girl."

"A lady doctor? Sounds fantastic. Where is she, and where is Donna?"

The Doctor gave him the little map, explaining the layout of the town, and the position of Donna's shop. The town was small, and he assumed that his sister's doctor friend could lead Jack to the place without trouble.

Jack disappeared into the night toward the town about the time that Amy, Mickey, and Jake emerged to group around the Doctor.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," they agreed.

~?~?~?~?~

Jack followed the map and found himself at the entrance to a small flat where he knocked on the door. It was growing late, and he wondered if the lady doctor would be asleep already, and what he should do if she was, when not a minute later the door cracked open, and a large, brown eye peered out at him.

"Who are you?"

Jack gave the eye his very best, patented grin. The eye did not look impressed.

"Jack Harkness, and you are?" he answered, holding out a hand.

"Not buying what you're selling."

The door began to close and Jack jumped into action. He'd never failed the Doctor before, and he wasn't about to start now.

"Hey, wait, I'm sorry. I'm here because of Rose… and Donna!" The closing door halted in its tracks. Jack took that as a good sign and continued. "Something happened with Rose's husband, and she's at Donna's place now, but she needs a doctor. And a friend."

Suddenly the door was open, and Jack was facing a strikingly beautiful young black woman.

"She left her husband?"

Jack shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know the whole story. I was sent to go fetch her friend the doctor and take her back to Donna's place."

"Of course, I won't be a minute," she said, and closed the door in Jack's face.

Had he been asked to put together a picture of a girl doctor in his head, she wouldn't have looked anything like the one who had just left him in the cold night on her doorstep ( _and how often had that happened to him, Jack thought with a smile_ ).

When she returned, Jack gallantly offered her his arm, which she took with a smile, slinging a bag over her shoulder and leading him down the road.

"Let me start over now that you know I'm not harassing you for no reason in the dark of the night. I'm Jack Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness, if you prefer."

Martha giggled. She'd never met a man like Jack Harkness. He was very handsome and very self-assured, and it was very appealing, though she was a bit wary. She offered him her name. "Martha Jones."

" _Doctor_ Martha Jones," Jack corrected.

"Midwife, actually. They don't let… well… people like me become doctors."

"Why not? Too young?" Of course, Jack knew what she meant. He'd seen it hundreds of times in the years- places that were mostly tolerant of the drifters barring the doors to Mickey.

She shook her head. "You remind me a bit of Rose. Has she really left that horrible man? Is she finished with him?"

"I'm sorry, I honestly don't know. I'm friends with Donna's brother, and all I know is that he caught her husband pushing her around, and he helped her get out of there and took her to Donna's place. He asked a few of us to keep an eye out in case the husband comes looking for her."

Martha nodded, then seemed to realize something. "Donna's brother? But that makes him the Count!"

"Yeah, I wouldn't say that in earshot of anyone. Most of his friends don't know he's titled, and it could be a bit awkward."

Martha frowned, but did not object. As they turned the corner onto the main square of town, she looked across and gasped.

"There's someone outside Donna's shop. Is it Jimmy?"

Jack followed her eyes and recognized the dark shape standing outside of the warmly lit interior of the shop. So like him to stand outside the warmth and light, as though he didn't deserve it.

"No, he's a friend."

The two hurried across the square and the dark shape resolved itself into a tall, lean man with the insouciant grace of a panther lying in wait.

As they approached, a voice issued from the dark man, sharp and nearly accusatory. "So you're the doctor, are you?"

Jack could feel Martha's spine stiffen at his side.

"I am," she said, "and who are you?"

"Er," Jack jumped in. "Martha Jones, this is the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor," he said in that annoying way he had. Jack wanted to stamp down on his friend's foot to stop him being so rude, but it was too far away, and too dark to find a black boot on the black ground.

"People just call you the Doctor, do they?" Martha asked.

"Yep."

"Well, not me. Far as I'm concerned, you have to _earn_ that title."

Jack, despite the Doctor's rudeness, opened his mouth to defend his friend, only to hear that rich, baritone chuckle of his sound out of the darkness.

"Fantastic. Then I'd better start. I'll take you up to see Donna and Rose. Come on in, then."

When the Doctor opened the door to the shop, Jack glanced over at Martha in the light that spilled out. Her mouth was opened just slightly and she was looking at the Doctor like he was the strangest thing she'd ever seen. Jack started to laugh, which snapped Martha out of her shock.

"Come on then," the Doctor said. "Unless you're planning on standing in the dark and cold all night. Can't do much for Rose out there."

That reminder brought Martha scurrying into the shop. Jack entered at a more leisurely pace behind her, glancing over the space. He approved the warm colours, the sparkling cleanliness, and the lovely setup. Donna Noble seemed to have found a calling in running a chocolate shop.

At the counter that stretched across the right side of the shop, his comrades were standing, all of them with a mug of something that smelled like heaven and looked like milky coffee in hand.

As the Doctor shut the door with a snap, everyone turned to look at them.

"Martha!" A flurry of ginger hair and bright skirts was suddenly across the room and enveloping the pretty young doctor in a hug. After a moment she pulled back so that she could look at the younger girl.

"I hated to wake you, but there's no one else I can call. The Doctor there is no good for this kind of thing, and she'll want you when she wakes, I'm sure of it."

"She still hasn't woken up?" Chris' voice was sharp, and both women turned to look at him.

"I'll take a look at her," Martha said, turning back to Donna.

"Of course." Donna took her arm and started to lead her toward the stairs but turned on her brother as he began to follow them. "You stay down here. You're here for security, not to moon over pretty girls."

"I'm not-" he objected, voice rising to an undignified squeak.

"Doctor," Jack said, and though his voice was soft, there was a snap in it that made his old friend turn to look at him.

After a moment, the Doctor sighed and nodded and turned back to his sister.

"Have a cup of chocolate," she said. "No need to stand in the cold unless something goes wrong." She and Martha then disappeared upstairs.

Jack decided to accept the offer and took one of the cups from the tray. He took a long drink and closed his eyes and allowed the comfort of cream and sugar and the bitterness of chocolate and the savour of spices to dance across his tongue. Jack Harkness was not one to lose his heart to a woman, but a cup of hot chocolate? He might manage that.

"You never mentioned that your sister was an angel, Doc," he said when he could speak again.

"Time and a place, Harkness, and this is neither."

"You're no fun."

Mickey set his cup down on the counter with a click. "Doctor, how long are we staying in Gallifrey, exactly?" He swallowed as the Doctor turned his icy eyes onto him, but gamely continued. "It's only that you said we'd be leaving after a few hours but now? Seems like we're… well… _involved_."

The Doctor turned away from the group with a heavy sigh. As soon as his back was to them, Jack leaned over and smacked Mickey gently across the back of the head.

"I was just wondering!" Mickey whispered.

"Time and a place, idiot," Jack hissed back.

"I can hear you both, you know," Chris said from where he stood at the window, looking into the night. "Yeah, I said we'd leave quickly, but things are different than I expected. You're right, Mickey, we're involved now. I didn't expect Donna to be here, but she is, and I won't leave her if there's a chance she might get hurt. We'll stay until things cool down, then we'll be off. Back to the old life."

"Might be dangerous around here," Jack said, watching the Doctor's back and sipping his drink.

"That's true. And if you want to go on to the next place without me, that's all right. I'll catch you up."

"Don't be stupid," Mickey said. "We're here with you, I just wanted to know. The girl doctor is pretty."

"And way out of your league, Mickey my boy," Jack said, slapping him on the back.

"Mmmm," the Doctor grunted. "If she's taking Donna and Rose's side in this, she may need our protection as well. I'll keep in mind, if she needs personal protection, that you volunteered."

Mickey ducked his head, dark cheeks darkening further, and Jake, Jack, and Amy all laughed.

Jack noticed when the Doctor stiffened. Remembered it from their days in the trenches. Remembered it and with it the smells of blood and cordite and shit and fear. He stepped up beside his friend and peered into the dark.

There, across the square, he could see the beginnings of a mob of people. One or two were carrying torches, but more were carrying truncheons or simply looked murderous and drunken.

"Here comes trouble," Jack breathed.

"Mickey, you and Jake, through that door." The Doctor had suddenly become a military commander as quick as blinking. He pointed to the kitchen as he issued his orders. "There's a back door through there, be sure no one comes through it, you understand?"

The two young men nodded and moved together out of sight. The pair were not brothers, but had been together so long that they seemed to be, and they moved almost in unison.

"Amy and Jack, with me at the front," the Doctor said.

The two of them nodded, and the Doctor's eagle eyes caught their subtle movements as they took their places on either side of him.

"I told you, no guns," he growled, even as he opened the door and proceeded them both out.

"You're right, you did," Jack said.

"And you ignored me."

"You're right, we did," Amy said with a cheerful smile.

"It was an order," the Doctor growled, though his eyes were trained on the mass of men moving toward them across the square.

"It may come as a shock to you, Doc, but I'm not army anymore, and neither are you," Jack said, smoothly, eyes trained as the Doctor's were.

"And I never was," Amy said, taking one step to the side to give herself a clear line of sight to the other end of the street, just in case.

"Fine," the Doctor murmured as he settled himself back against the door in a display of nonchalance that fooled neither of his comrades, but might work on the drunken men who were now nearly upon them. "It's the absolutely last resort, you got it? No violence if we can manage it."

"You're the boss, boss," Amy said.

The men were upon them and, as the Doctor had expected, leading the pack was Jimmy Stone, nearly as drunk and enraged as he had been the last time the Doctor had seen him almost two hours past.

"Where is she?" he yelled, waving a thick truncheon perilously close to the Doctor's overlarge nose. "Where is my cheating bitch of a wife? Is she in there? In there with the chocolate whore? Answer me, you bastard!"

The Doctor laid a large hand on the stick being waved in his face, and pushed it out of the way.

"You're welcome to call me any foul name you can think of, if you like, but I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of Donna and Rose," he said, calmly.

Jack smirked. The Doctor's apparent calm seemed to enrage the drunk who seemed to forget his truncheon and moved into the Doctor's face.

"I'll call her whatever I like because that ugly cunt is mine by right. I can call her what I please and do with her what I please, and some no-account river-rat won't stop me, do you hear me?"

"Oh, I hear you," the Doctor said, and there was a smile in his voice. "I can hear a lot of things, me. It's the ears, you know. I can hear most anything with ears like these."

"Then how about you step aside and let me get my bitch of a wife, so I can take her home and teach her a lesson about running off that she won't soon forget, and you can move on. This doesn't concern you, you understand?"

"Ah, now there's the thing," the Doctor said, and suddenly he was moving, no longer leaning against the wall and stepping into the other man's space, looming over him so that he took an involuntary step back. The entire mob did, the Doctor exuded so much power. "I can hear anything, but there's things I don't understand, you see. I don't understand that a person is your property, even if you're married to that person. I don't understand that a few words said in a church give you the right to beat a person half your size to unconsciousness. I don't understand that anything gives you the right to come to someone's home in the middle of the night and harass them."

What had started low and dangerous had grown into a shout, and Jack could feel his own hackles raise as the Doctor's wolf howled.

When the Doctor stepped away from Jimmy, who stood looking stunned and frightened, another man stepped forward- heavy-faced and glaring.

"Who do you think you are, then? Some kind of champion of fallen women?"

The Doctor leaned back against the door, unruffled confidence yet again, and a smile played at the corners of his mobile lips.

"You've got no idea who I am, have you?" he said, ironically. "But I think you just summed me up."


	12. After Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I've, unfortunately, nothing clever to say this week. I hope that those of you preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday (in the US) are having a lovely time, and those of you in countries that don't have a cultural love affair with gluttony are enjoying the autumn!**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday!**

Martha ran soft, clinical hands over Rose to assess the extent of her injuries. She had a rib that Martha suspected was cracked and bruising everywhere, but she was relatively lucky. Nearly everything was a surface injury.

"She's all right. She'll ache for weeks, and that rib'll need to be strapped, but she's fine for now. No head injury, so she can even still sleep."

"No head injury?" Donna asked. "But… why is she unconscious?"

Martha pointed to the bruising around her neck. "He strangled her. She must have lost oxygen and passed out, not hit her head."

Donna's eyes darkened in fury. "I want to kill him."

"Get in line," Martha said softly.

For a long moment, the three women sat in silence- one asleep and two lost in their own thoughts. Martha kept a grip on Rose's hand as they sat.

After a few minutes, Donna startled and moved to the window, and a moment later Martha could hear it too. A grumble of chatter that was growing ever closer.

"It's Jimmy and his mates coming from the pub," Donna said.

Martha tensed involuntarily and squeezed Rose's hand, then squeaked in surprise when she felt her hand squeezed in return.

"Rose?" Martha asked, turning to see her friend's sooty lashes begin to flutter.

"Martha?" Rose murmured, eyes blinking open slowly. "What're you doing here? What happened?"

Even as she asked, she raise the hand that Martha was not holding to rub at her eyes and gasped when bruised muscles protested.

With the pain she came fully awake and with wakefulness came memory.

"Jimmy," she gasped, sitting up despite the screaming pain in every part of her body. "He's going to kill me."

Martha put her hands on Rose's shoulders, trying to push her back down, and Donna came to kneel beside the bed.

"No, you're fine, Rose, you're fine," Martha said, but Rose interrupted.

"Please, you have to help me, Martha. He'll kill me. He'll finally do it this time. I thought he had. I wanted him to."

"Rose, please," Donna said, laying a hand over the younger girl's, trying to calm her.

Rose was shaking like a leaf. "He was mad, Martha. He thought… he always thinks.. but it was the Doctor this time and it made him crazy. He choked me. I couldn't do anything… I couldn't make him stop… I thought he'd kill me this time and there wasn't anything I could do. There wasn't anything I _wanted_ to do."

"Oh Rose," Martha said, tears pouring down her face. She wrapped her arms around her friend and allowed her to shake and stammer in her arms. "Hush now," she murmured, rubbing her back like a child. "You're all right. It's all right. I promise."

The storm finally passed and Rose pulled away from Martha, her eyes wide and red-rimmed, but dry as ever.

"Where am I?" she asked, rubbing her eyes and wincing as she exacerbated the bruises on her face. "And where's Jimmy?"

"You're at my place," Donna said, still holding her hand. "And Jimmy isn't here, and he won't come here."

Rose looked around, wide-eyed, finally taking in her surroundings. Surroundings that were very familiar.

"I'm…" she whispered, trailing off.

"Home," Donna finished for her. "You can stay as long as you want, if you want. You don't have to go back to Jimmy, not if you don't want to."

Even as she was speaking, Rose was shaking her head. "He'll come for me, Donna. He'll come to get me and he won't let you stand in his way. He'll hurt you too. I can't stay here and put you in danger."

"Rose," Donna said, cupping her face in soft hands. "You listen to me. Jimmy Stone does not run the world."

"He might as well."

"Do you really believe that?"

There had been a time when Rose had done. When she had been sure that there was nothing to life but greasy chips in the pub, shouted abuse from the patrons, church on Sunday, and bruises covered up by makeup and carefully chosen frocks.

But then, like a fresh breeze off the sea, there had come into Gallifrey something new in the form of this woman and her chocolate shop and the world suddenly held exotic spices, tales from outside the borders of this little town, and sparkling blue eyes that could look past the years of pain and abuse and see her.

"No," she whispered. "No, I don't."

Donna smiled and stroked her hands down the sides of Rose's face. "Good," she said, and stood. "My brother and some of his pals are outside, making sure that Jimmy won't come bother us."

"And tomorrow?" Rose asked. "I can't ask you to put yourself in danger."

"Men like Jimmy? They're cowards," Martha said. "They won't come here in the light of day, they'll only come in the night like rats."

"But what about tomorrow night?" Rose was beginning to get agitated again, and Donna returned to her kneeling position in front of her.

"We'll face tomorrow night when it comes. But I promise you this- I'll promise it on Tardis, or in the name of chocolate itself- I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and you will not have to go back to Jimmy. Not if you don't want to."

"I never want to go back."

"Then you'll never have to."

Rose looked at Martha who nodded.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Well then," Donna said, voice going brisk and business-like. "I think we all need a cup of chocolate, don't you? And you, Rose, need something that'll help you sleep tonight without waking in pain every three minutes, eh? I'll leave that one to your doctor there and take care of the chocolate myself, will I?"

~?~?~?~?~

The mutinous mutterings of the men from the pub were silenced by the the arrival of the Countess Noble and Father Williams in their midst. Both had heard the commotion in the square and rushed out to lend assistance separately, only to find themselves arriving together.

"What's going on here?" Rory called out, raising his voice as though from the lectern in the church.

Everyone turned to face him and he noted the faces that glanced away the quickest. He had noted, as he had sped across the square, that some people from the mob had already dispersed. He had a feeling that the most sober of the men had come to their senses already and given the whole thing up as a bad job.

There were plenty of less-sober men, however, who could still make the situation difficult for everyone. The ones who had not averted their eyes when seeing that they were caught out by the priest and the mayor, specifically.

One man stepped forward, face flushed and eyes bloody.

"Beggin' your pardon, Father, but we're doing the Lord's work here, and no mistake," he stammered to a round of nods from the drunken contingent, and a shift away from the more sober.

"And can you explain to me, Turlough, what work of the Lord involves waking people in the dead of night and harassing a business after-hours?"

From the back of the group stepped forward the drunkest and most belligerent of the lot. The man who was, naturally, the leader for all of that. Jimmy Stone.

"We're here to get my wife. Lord says she's mine, and I intend to have her," he slurred. "She run off on me like some slut with some big-eared bastard and now she's hiding here with your," and here he pointed an unsteady finger at the countess, "cunt of a daughter."

"I don't know how many times my friend here is going to have to ask you to cease calling the ladies in question names, but it seems that at least one more reminder is in order," piped a lilting voice from the back of the crowd.

The men parted and Rory was faced with a tall, slim redhead who was polishing a wicked-looking knife on her coattails. She was, without a doubt, the loveliest woman that he had ever seen, and he had a feeling that she was among the most dangerous as well. Perhaps it was this fact which held him arrested.

"Bit dramatic, Amy," came a voice from the woman's left and Rory tore his eyes from the redhead (Amy) to a tall, lean, dark man with bright eyes and a smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he observed everything that was happening around him.

"Whatever you say, boss," she said, and slid the knife back into a holster at her belt.

The Countess Noble had failed to be distracted as Father Williams had been by Amy, and was, instead, staring at the man in the black leather coat as though he were a ghost.

"Christopher," she whispered.

The cool, blue eyes of that man found her, and though his smile remained in place, it appeared more strained than genuine.

"Mother," he said, cordially if ironically. "Fancy meeting you here."

"What is this?" Jimmy Stone cried out, drunkenly, looking between the two Nobles with fuzzy eyes. "Is your entire family involved? All of you just out to humiliate me? That's the one that the stupid great slapper ran off-"

Almost faster than seemed possible, Chris Noble had grabbed the front of Jimmy's shirt and pressed him up against the wall.

"You don't know me," he growled into the younger man's face, "so you don't know what kind of man I am. Now you're about to learn. I don't give second chances, so if I hear a word like that cross your tongue to insult your wife or my sister again, I'll cut it out."

"You wouldn't," Jimmy gasped.

The Doctor backed a step up, releasing Jimmy, who slumped to the ground.

"You may be right, I wouldn't," he said. He nodded toward Amy. "But she would."

Amy smiled and nodded toward Jack. "And he'll just put a bullet in you. No telling where, he'd like to keep it a surprise."

Jack just grinned.

"That's enough, Chris."

Everyone looked up to find Donna standing in the doorway, arms crossed, giving everyone a pointed glare.

"I don't know if you've all noticed, but it's late, and I should be abed as should all of you. The shop is closed. Go home, all of you."

"My wife-" Jimmy cried out from the ground at Chris's feet.

"Your wife," Donna interrupted, "is my guest here, and will be for as long as she wants to remain. And you are not welcome here." She looked up at the rest of the crowd. "As for the rest of you, you know our hours, now get going."

The men dispersed. Two grabbed Jimmy under the arms and helped him up and away, grumbling the entire time and, within a minute or two, it was only the four Nobles, Amy, Jack and the priest.

"Why is Rose here and not at her home?" Sylvia asked Donna.

"Is she alright?" Rory asked.

Donna shook her head. "She's in no fit state to be seen or questioned tonight. You both heard what I said. It goes for you as well. Come back when I'm open." She turned to her brother and his friends, finished speaking to her mother and Rory. "Will you stay? Be sure we're not bothered?"

"Of course," he said.

"I'll bring you all some coffee," she said, opening the door to go back in. She turned and looked at her brother again. "Chris? Thank you."


	13. Bruised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I hope that all of my readers in the US enjoyed their Thanksgiving, and are now celebrating the official beginning of the Christmas season. Since I don't eat turkey (no, Grandmother, vegetarians don't even eat turkey on Thanksgiving, please pass the potatoes) my pumpkin pasta was lovely, but I hope that, for all of you who did eat it, that no one's turkey was dry.**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday, and for those of you in the US and have this privilege, I hope you are enjoying the time off!**

The following morning, it seemed that all of Gallifrey knew that Rose Stone had left Jimmy and was hiding with Donna Noble in the chocolate shop. There were speculations as to why, few of which were even in the same neighborhood as the truth as the town prepared to give Tardis and those living within the most dramatic day the place had seen since it had opened.

~?~?~?~?~

Rose woke to the feel of sunlight over her bruised and swollen face. Though she remembered falling asleep clutching Martha's hand, she was alone when she woke. She moved slowly, muscles protesting every moment, but she managed to dress herself in her frock from the previous day. It wasn't until she had buttoned it and found the tear along the side that she sat and put her face in her hands.

She held to what she had said the previous night- she did not want to go back. If she never saw Jimmy Stone's face again, it would be too soon. She could not, however, ask Donna to take care of her like a mother- to feed and clothe and protect her. Everything that she owned or was was Jimmy's. As he had so often said: without him she was nothing.

She had to go back. He'd probably kill her, but she did not have any other choice.

She stumbled down the stairs, aching all over and groggy from the medication Martha had given her the previous night to find Donna alone in the kitchen of the chocolate shop.

The older woman looked up at her entrance and smiled. "Good morning. There's porridge on the stove, do you prefer coffee, tea, or chocolate this morning?"

Rose blinked in surprise. "I don't… that is, you don't need… tea, please."

Donna's smile evolved into a grin as she poured tea and nodded toward the stove again. Rose approached and ladled out the cinnamon-scented porridge into the stoneware bowl that sat on the counter.

Donna had set Rose's tea on the worktop near a tall stool along with a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar. Rose poured the cream over her porridge and stirred it with utmost attention, not wanting to look up at her benefactress again.

Finally, Rose had gathered her courage to look up to find Donna pouring a pot of steaming chocolate onto the countertop.

Everything Rose had been meaning to say flew from her mind.

"What are you doing? Won't that ruin your chocolate?""

"Nope," Donna said, emphasizing the final plosive with relish. "Makes it better, actually."

She plucked a long, slim, silver tool from among several others and began to smooth the chocolate across the surface of the counter with precise, practiced movements.

"It's a process called tempering. You heat and cool the chocolate so that, when you use it, it remains shiny and malleable, rather than becoming brittle and blooming."

Rose frowned, still not understanding. She had heavier matters on her mind than chocolate, however.

"I… erm… I need to talk to you, Donna."

"I'm listening," the chocolatier said, without looking up from her work.

"I… well… first I wanted to thank you for helping me last night and taking me in when I…" Rose was suddenly distracted by a realization. "Actually… how did I get here last night? I don't remember."

"Chris brought you. He walked me back here after dinner, then he says he went back to the pub for another drink. Think he might have had another excuse." This last was murmured, and Rose wondered what she meant. "Anyway, he heard some kind of commotion in the kitchen and found you, passed out, and Jimmy… well…"

"Yeah."

"And he picked you up and brought you here."

"Why?"

Donna glanced up. "Why what?"

"Why here? Why not to your mother or… someone? And why me?"

"Well Chris and Mum don't get on any better than me and Mum, so that's the first two questions answered. As for why you… well… you were in trouble, and he's got a bit of a hero complex. And he likes you."

Rose looked down into her bowl of porridge, face flushing between the bruises. "He doesn't know me."

"And don't think he won't fix that."

Rose looked up again and took a deep breath. It was time to say what she'd decided she would have to up in her room. "Donna-"

Rose was interrupted by a loud knocking at the back door to the kitchen. She knocked over her tea getting out of her seat and backing into the corner before a loud, Scottish-accented, and clearly female voice called out from the other side.

"Oi, someone let me in. My hands are full."

"Just a minute!" Donna called as she scraped her cooled chocolate back into the pot. She turned to look at Rose only to find her cowering in the corner, dark eyes wide and frightened.

"That'll be Amy," Donna said, gently. "One of Chris' crew. She'll be about the shop with us today. Help keep anyone out that we don't want in, if that's alright with you? She doesn't have to stay if you prefer."

"I-I- I don't- I wasn't…" Rose stammered, but was interrupted again by more banging on the door.

"I'm not getting any younger!"

"I'll let her in for now to stop her shouting, will I?" Donna asked.

Rose could only nod.

Donna opened the door and Amelia entered like a hurricane, arms full of brightly-coloured fabrics and talking the whole time.

"Honestly, could you have possibly taken any longer getting the door? This lot's heavier than it looks. If my arms fall off at the shoulder, I'm blaming you."

"I don't know if you've noticed," Donna snarked back, "but I've a business to run here and chocolate to make before I can open. Maybe you need to learn a bit of patience."

"Oi! I'll have you know that I'm perfectly patient when I want to be. I just didn't want to be!"

Rose couldn't help but smile at the girl's cheek. It was oddly refreshing when compared to Donna's careful gentleness.

"Herself still abed then?" Amelia asks, eyes scanning the room before landing on Rose in the corner. "No then. Blimey but he did a number on you, didn't he? No wonder the Doctor was so furious. Surprised he didn't knock him out for that." She crossed the room and held out a hand under the bundle of cloth that she was carrying. "M'name's Amelia Pond, but everyone calls me Amy."

"Rose," she responded, taking the woman's hand briefly. She felt uncomfortable giving her surname as 'Stone' having walked away from home and husband as she had.

"Lovely. Well, where do you want these?" Amy asked indicating the bundle in her arms. "We'll have to see if any of them fit you or if we'll have to spend the days gossiping about with our needles like a sewing circle."

"I don't… what?"

"It's clothes!" Amy said with a smile, shaking it slightly. "You can't wear that frock forever, even if we fix it, and you can't go back and get your clothes from that bastard of a husband of yours, 'cause it isn't safe. So I asked around the crew and there were a lot of 'em with some extras. Nothing's new, particularly, but there are some nice pieces in there. Bet we can find a handful of things that'll suit you."

Rose stood with her mouth gaping for a long moment before she seemed to come to herself.

"Thank you. I… thank you."

"Well come on then," Amy said, brightly. "Let's pretend we're in Paris, visiting all the fine shops and trying on all the fine fashions. It'll be fun!"

"Go on up," Donna said from the other side of the kitchen. "I'll open up and bring you up some tea when I've got a minute."

"Lead on, Macduff," Amy said to Rose with a grin.

In Amy's vibrant presence, Rose somehow forgot to be frightened. Amy pushed and bullied her out of her torn frock, even when she attempted to hide her nudity.

"Now now, none of that. We're all girls here, eh? Nothing I haven't seen before in my own bedroom."

Eventually, the pair of them were having such fun pretending to be posh ladies in a shop that Rose left behind embarrassment, left behind fear, even left behind pain. Though some movements still made her wince, Amy would not allow her to dwell, merely gave a sympathetic look, or helped with a button that was out of her range of motion.

Donna arrived with tea after a few minutes, but left again to run the shop. Martha arrived about an hour after Tardis opened as the pair of girls were winding down and got to see Rose's final selections.

There was one green frock that would need to be hemmed by a few inches, a blue skirt, a pair of brown trousers like Amy wore, a white top and a green one that would both need to be taken in at the shoulder and waist and, by far Rose's favourite, a pink frock with a swishy skirt that made her feel as though she belonged on the stage and fit her like a dream without alteration.

"You're beautiful, Rose," Martha said with a smile.

"Be even prettier without the bruises," Amy said in her frank way.

Rose threw her arms around Amy in a sudden hug. "Thank you so much for thinking of this, Amelia Pond," she murmured. "I was so sure I'd have to go back because I didn't have anything… thank you."

Amy stroked Rose's back for a moment, and then disentangled herself. "None of that now, it wasn't anything difficult. I had fun. Besides, it was the Doctor's idea in the first place."

"The Doctor?" Rose asked in confusion.

"Yeah! Hard to imagine him thinking of it, eh? But he came up to me this morning and asked me to spend the day with you and Donna to be sure you two were all right and no one came to bother you, and would I see if any of the women on the crew had extra clothes they might loan you. Well, I thought it was a brilliant idea and went right on and did it!"

"That's… I'll have to thank him," Rose said, softly, a slight flush rising between the bruises on her face.

"He's likely to be by this afternoon. He wants someone at the shop all the time, if possible, and I've things that need doing today, so I can't stay the whole day. It'll be either him or Jack at night though, I'm sure of it."

"Mickey was at my place when I left this morning, but I told him I didn't need a nanny and sent him off," Martha said, and her dusky cheeks darkened slightly.

"Aye," Amy said with a sly grin for Martha. "He asked for that assignment specific. He thinks you're right pretty, and the Doctor said he could. He won't bother you if you don't need him though."

Rose was stunned, both at the Doctor's thoughtfulness and at his presumption, but was saved having to answer by Donna calling to her from the shop.

Martha, Rose, and Amy filed down the steps with Rose in the lead. As they approached the shop, they could hear Donna talking to someone.

"I think you're a good man. I don't think for one moment that you'll be able to look her in the face and tell her she has to go back to that man. Not for one second."

Rose stopped, three steps from the bottom, her face going pale. Someone was going to make her go home.

Martha grabbed her arm, gentle around her bruises, and whispered, "no one is going to make you go back, Rose. I promise. If you don't want to go, everyone will fight to be sure that you stay right here."

Rose took a deep breath and nodded then continued down the steps to the shop. There she found Father Williams talking with Donna, facing away from the stairs.

Donna smiled at Rose, Amy, and Martha as they entered. "That dress is lovely on you, Rose. I'm glad you found something to wear."

Rory turned and caught his first glimpse of Rose's face and neck, and his eyes widened.

"Thank you, Donna," Rose said. "Good morning, Father Williams. Are you going to send me back to Jimmy?"

He looked at her for a long moment, taking in her new frock, her bare feet, and the bruises on her legs and arms, on the bit of her chest that was visible over the neckline of her dress and disappeared underneath it.

"This isn't the first time, is it?" he asked.

"Hardly," Martha spat.

Rose shook her head. "It's fine, Martha. No, Father, it's not the first time."

He shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Rose. I wish you'd told me- but," he hastened to add as Donna, Martha, and Amy all opened their mouth to object, "I understand why you didn't. Why you couldn't. And even more, I wish I'd been clever enough to see it for myself. I should have done."

Rose held his gaze steadily, though the women around her nodded at the Father's words.

"And Jimmy? Do you think I should go back to him?"

"No. Please don't. And if you need anything- a place to go, someone to talk to, anything- don't hesitate to come to me. I'm sorry… I wasn't much of a minister to you before, but I want to be now. I'd like to make it up to you." He reached out his hand to her as he had when first they had met. "My name is Rory Williams, and I'm the new priest and, in case you were wondering, the Countess does not control me."

For the first time since he had met her, Rory saw a real smile grace Rose Stone's face.

She took his hand. "Rose. It's wonderful to meet you, Father."

"Rory."

"Rory then. Would you like a cup of tea?"

Rory grinned.

~?~?~?~?~

Sylvia Noble arrived at Tardis to find it noisily occupied already.

As she stepped into the strange space, her eyes first lit upon a head of bright red hair, expecting it to be her daughter. It was not. This woman was younger and slimmer, with an air of sexuality and wildness that even Donna did not have. She was talking to Father Williams, though 'talking' was a generous term. She was leaned into him, touching him on the arm and batting her eyelashes- flirting outrageously. The priest was blushing like a schoolboy, but smiling as well.

Sylvia was surprised to find her father there, sharing a cup of something with Martha Jones and smiling more than she'd seen him do in a long time. His presence worried her almost as much as Father Williams'- he was an old, sick man and did not need to be tiring himself out with young people. He was also inclined toward scandal and would, undoubtedly, choose the wrong side if the situation between Rose and her husband became common knowledge.

Donna and Rose were nowhere to be found, but as Sylvia entered the shop and was spotted, first by the redhead talking to the priest, then by the priest himself, and then by the other pair, the pleasant hum of conversation died.

Donna entered the room from the door to the kitchen as though summoned by the quiet. She appeared unsurprised to see her mother, though she did not smile.

"Mother," she said, gently. "Welcome to Tardis. May I interest you in a cup of chocolate?"

"You know why I'm here, Donna. Where is Rose? She needs to return to her husband, and you need to stop interfering in people's lives. I don't know what you said to her to convince her she should leave him, but I know she would never have done so unless you said something and it is time for her to come to her senses."

Sylvia noticed, as she spoke, that the tension had built quickly in the room. Martha and the slim girl that she did not know where glaring daggers at her, and both her father and the priest had gone still.

"You'd like Rose to return to Jimmy," Donna said.

"She belongs with her husband. You know I'm right, no matter what fantasy you've fed her."

Donna pursed her lips and nodded. "Rose, sweetheart, would you mind coming out here, please?" she called back to the kitchen.

When Rose appeared in the doorway, Sylvia felt her jaw drop. She was all-over black and blue with handprints at her throat, a nasty black eye and split lip, and smaller bruises down her arms and legs.

"What happened?" she cried out in horror.

"What does it look like happened, Mother?" Donna said, angrily.

"Jimmy… did this," Rose said, softly, eyes trained on the ground.

"But what did you do?" Sylvia asked.

There was a collective intake of breath, and Donna stepped forward as though to slap her mother. Sylvia could not look away from Rose, however, who had finally looked up.

Her eyes were blazing gold, as though all the power in the universe were behind them and Sylvia took a step back at their burning fury.

"How dare you? My husband- the man who is meant to love and protect me above all others- beat me to within an inch of my life and you ask what I did? As though I could possibly have deserved this. As though by burning his dinner or saying something rude, he had a right to try to strangle me to death?"

"But… Jimmy wouldn't-" Sylvia began.

"Wouldn't he? I think I know better than you what he's capable of. The first time he hit me we had been married for three days. Three. Days. Not a week has gone by that it hasn't happened again. I will not go back. I. Will. Not."

Sylvia opened her mouth to speak and was interrupted yet again by a voice at the entrance to the shop.

"I think that Rose has said all that needs to be said and that, perhaps, it is time for you to go, Mother."


	14. Unlimited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I was a bit afraid that I wouldn't manage to get this chapter up on time... I had a slightly dramatic day at the office and my health has (again) been called into question. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, but it's always fun to wonder, eh?**
> 
> **Everyone seemed very excited for this chapter last week. I hope I don't disappoint!**

Sylvia turned toward the voice to find her newly-arrived son fixing her with an icy glare from the entrance to the shop. She looked about the room and realized that every eye was angry and cold upon her. Upon finding herself surrounded by anger and ice, she beat a hasty retreat, leaving an awkward silence in her wake.

The tense silence was broken after just a few long seconds by chatter from every person in the room save for two.

Chris Noble's icy blue eyes had followed his mother out of the shop and halfway across the square before returning and zeroing in on Rose in an instant.

Rose stood silent, the brilliant she-wolf of moments before shed like a mask and in her place was a scared creature with wide eyes and trembling limbs, suddenly and acutely aware of the bridges that she had just burned.

Before anyone else could notice, Chris was at her side.

"Hey now, you're all right," he cooed gently to her as she shook. "Better than all right, you were completely brilliant." He reached out to stroke her face with his large hand and stopped just before contact as she flinched away. He dropped his hand to his side. He would not touch her without her permission.

"What have I done?" she whispered. "I have to go back."

"Back?" Chris asked, his heart sinking. "Back to your husband?"

She lifted her eyes to his and there was nothing but despair and fear in hers. "What else can I do? I don't know how to do anything else but be his wife. I can't… I can't do anything else. Without him I'm nothing."

"Nothing?" Wilf had joined them, taking a place on Rose's other side. "I think we just witnessed you being the first person since the Count died to put my daughter in her place, or was that some other Rose, eh?"

"But I don't… I can't… I can't _do_ anything. And you lot can't take care of me forever."

Wilf shrugged. "Maybe not, but we can do it for a while more, yet. And while we can, you can learn how to do something. Learn how to make chocolates from Donna, or how to fiddle with one of those engines of his from Chris. Learn to birth a baby from Martha. Or do something else. Learn to turn cartwheels and join the circus. You're a clever girl, you can learn to do anything that you like."

"What do you _want_ to do, Rose?" Donna asked.

Rose blinked in surprise. In all her life, no one had ever asked her that, not really. She'd been told as a child that she would inherit the bakery. She'd been told to marry Jimmy. He'd told her to run his pub. Even leaving Jimmy, though possibly the best thing that she had ever done, had been done for her- picked up and carried away like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale.

But now, here, she was being asked what _she_ wanted to do- who she wanted to be- and it was shocking and terrifying and liberating.

"I… I don't know," she said, slowly. "I don't know what I want to do… but I want to try… everything."

She looked up and met the eyes around her- grey and green and brown- and found herself resting on a pair of blue eyes in an angular face.

"I don't know if I'm any good at anything, but I want to figure it out… I want to try making chocolate and fixing engines and dancing and turning cartwheels and… _everything_."

He was older than her by a fair number of years, and when he smiled, the skin around his eyes creased deeply but the worried creases across his forehead eased. She couldn't have said what it was about those little crinkles that sent warmth through her belly, but they did.

"Your wish is my command," he said quietly.

She was younger than him by a fair number of years, and when she smiled her cheeks looked fuller than usual- her face rounder and more youthful. He knew exactly what made that smile send warmth through his belly, but he knew that he could do nothing about it.

~?~?~?~?~

Jimmy came-to slowly, swimming up through the greasy waters of sleep to the thudding pain of wakefulness.

He lifted his head from the filthy barroom table where, apparently, he had fallen asleep and immediately regretted it. His head swam and he thought he might empty his stomach of it's contents which were largely- if the bottle sitting next to his right hand were to be believed- one of his better single-malt scotches. He should have sold the stuff, but it appeared that he'd poured it all into this morning's hangover.

"Rose?" he croaked out and winced at the sound of his own voice echoing inside his aching skull. "Rose, bring me some tea," he said, then rested his head back on his hands to hopefully stop the spinning of the room and wait for his wife to follow his orders.

After several long minutes, Jimmy began to notice some things. First was that the light was too bright for it to be first thing in the morning. After considering that with his handicapped faculties for much longer than it should have taken, he estimated that it was nearly 10. He was to open in an hour.

Second was the fact that there was no smell of cooking food, no sound of bustling from the kitchen, nothing that would indicate that his wife was up and doing her duty.

Jimmy could not remember the previous night, but if Rose was still abed, she would get a walloping for it- he had a business to run, after all. He finally shoved himself off the table again and got a good look around his bar and was appalled. Glasses were still on the tables, the bar-top was still sticky with spilled drinks, and the entire place reeked of beer and spoiling food.

"Rose!" he roared, staggering up from the table, fury overwhelming his hangover. He would kill her for this, he really would- he had to open in an hour and it was obvious that the little tramp had forgotten her duty to her husband and master. "Where are you, you lazy bitch?"

A loud rapping at the front door to the pub made him want to curl in on himself as the noise hit his much-abused brain.

"We're closed, bugger off!" he called at the closed door.

"James Stone, you will let me in right this instant if you know what's good for you."

Recognition made its way sluggishly through the haze of both whiskey and fury, but Jimmy was finally able to place the voice as that of the Countess. For some reason, a memory came loose from the previous night as well- standing outside and shouting at the Countess, and a pair of blue eyes that were as dangerous as any he'd ever seen.

He stormed over to the door and wrenched it open.

Sylvia Noble glared at the man standing unsteadily on the other side of the door. She should have known he'd be in this state- he'd been nearly insensible the night before, and who knew how much more alcohol he'd poured into it after leaving the chocolate shop.

"What have you done?" she asked, advancing on him close enough that he took a step back.

"Wha-?"

"I've just come from Donna's shop. Rose is there and she's all over bruises, so I ask again: What. Have. You. Done?"

"I didn't-"

"Don't lie to me!"

"I'm not, I-"

"I've seen her, are you not understanding that? She's covered in bruises head to toe and she says she won't come back, now either start telling the truth or you'll have to just figure it out for yourself!"

Jimmy sat heavily in a chair and covered his face in his hands. The Countess felt bad for the young man- he had to be nearly dying of hangover, his bar was a complete disaster, and his wife had left him. She resolved to do what she could to help him, but not before he answered her question honestly.

"Yeah, all right, I may have lost my temper with her. I was just so angry. She was flirting, like she always does, and she's been so distant with me, and… well… I'd been drinking." He looked up at her, eyes wide and sincere. "I lost my temper and I regret it. I just want her to come back to me. You'll make her come back, won't you?"

"No."

"What?" He was on his feet again, towering over her, furious again.

"I won't make her do anything- you made a grave error- but I will help you to get her back. You must swear that you will never do something like that again, however."

Jimmy gave her a long look, and Sylvia wondered what was going through his head. After a time, however, he nodded and looked ashamed.

"What do I need to do?"

~?~?~?~?~

Father Williams returned to the church with a smile that seemed unable to fade still on his lips.

Amelia Pond- the girl with a name like a fairy tale- had smiled at him over the rim of her cup of chocolate, and he'd followed her like a puppy for the rest of the day. She'd teased him, laughed at him, and flirted outrageously with him. Though he knew, intellectually, that her behaviour did not necessarily indicate real interest in him, he had rarely had any attention paid him like that, and had very little defense. When she'd admitted to him that she was writing a novel and hoped to be published, he had offered to read it for her, and she had thrown her arms around his neck in thanks.

It was that final hug and, even more, the slightly shy suggestion that she might come by the church tomorrow with her manuscript that had cemented the smile in place. The fact that the brash, brave, rude young woman that he had met had a vulnerable side as well just endeared her to him further.

Entering the sanctuary of the church, he was met with possibly the only thing that could ruin his pleasant mood at that moment: Countess Noble in the front pew, as was her habit, and beside her Jimmy Stone, looking as though he had not had an easy night.

"Good morning Countess, Mr. Stone," Rory said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "How may I assist you?"

The question had been aimed mostly at Jimmy, but the Countess answered before he could open his mouth.

"James is looking for help in getting his life back on track."

"Is he?" Rory said, still looking at Jimmy for the answer.

"He is," the Countess said. "You must help him to find the Lord again, and in so doing, he shall be a better man."

"I don't know that it's as simple as that, but what gives you the impression that you have fallen away from the Lord, Mr. Stone?" Rory asked.

"I should think that was quite obvious, Father," the Countess said, acidly.

"Countess, unless he has lost his tongue since last I saw him, it would be best if Mr. Stone answered for himself, please," Rory bit out. "Mr. Stone? Why are you seeking my help?"

Jimmy looked up, confused, at the priest. "Well… Rose left me, and I have to get her back, you see."

"Oh? And why did she leave you?" Rory asked, though he knew full well.

"Er…" Jimmy looked at the Countess as though hoping that she would answer for him. She was glaring at Rory, however, and was paying Jimmy little attention. "Well… I may have lost my temper with her last night a bit, when I'd been drinking."

"A bit?" Rory had seen Rose's face and neck. 'A bit' was the understatement of the century.

"Well… I was angry. And I'd been drinking, like I said. And she was flirting with some bloke, like she always does, and it was just the final straw," Jimmy justified.

If Rose's story were true, and Rory was inclined to believe her over the man attempting to justify abuse, it was hardly the final straw. That said, he had been called to the work of God, and Rory knew that salvation was attainable by anyone, even if he- with all his human faults and blindness- could not see that they deserved it.

"I will help you to find forgiveness from the Lord, Mr. Stone," Rory said, after a long pause. "It is my responsibility as your minister. However, your marriage is your own affair, and I will take no part in it."

The Countess opened her mouth to object, but Rory held up a hand to stop her. "Countess, I cannot make suggestions in the matters of the heart. I am, simply put, not qualified."

She closed her mouth, unable to argue the point with the unmarried priest.

"Mr. Stone, I expect you here at 9 AM every Saturday for the catechism class. I think it is time that you went back to the beginning."


	15. Doomed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **During the writing of this chapter, WLG and I regularly referred to it as "the musical number."**
> 
> **A bit of a confession: my head hasn't been a good or healthy place to hang out for nearly a month. Because of that, I haven't been able to get a lot of writing done, and am, therefore, burning through my buffer for this story. I do not know for sure that I will have to take a posting break after the holidays, but there is a good chance. I am letting you know in advance because I've never had to do this before, and I'm unhappy that I have to do it now. I hope you will continue to wait for updates, however, because I do love providing you this story!**

Chris had a feeling that he had been doomed from the moment he'd set foot off his boat into the town of his birth that year. He might have avoided it all by doing as he'd told his crew and leaving as soon as he'd checked in on his grandfather, but then he wouldn't have been there to save Rose Stone from her husband, and he had a feeling that the man would not have stopped before she stopped breathing.

And, for some reason, a universe without Rose seemed like it would be a much darker place. whether he'd known who she was or not.

The morning after he saved her, when she had flinched away from his touch, he had sworn to himself that he would keep his heart locked away, not to be lost to this girl who had already suffered so much. She did not deserve to suffer him and his life and his history on top of everything else.

As though she had known what he had decided and wished to challenge it, however, she had smiled at him and his heart- traitor that it was- had stumbled.

Oh yes. Chris Noble was fully aware that he was doomed and that his sentence had been pronounced by another man's wife.

Not, he justified to himself as he frowned at the hinges on Donna's front door that he'd agreed to look into fixing, that he considered her marriage vows to the Stone bastard inviolate. Quite the opposite, in fact. But it was the very tainting of those vows that made it impossible for the Doctor to move forward. The other man had done such damage to his wife that she was frightened of even the lightest touch from a man, and Chris swore to himself that he would never do anything to cast fear over those eyes if he could help it.

"Erm… Doctor?" came a timid voice from behind him, slicing through his morose thoughts.

He turned to find Rose standing behind him, wringing her hands and not looking at him.

"Yeah?" he said, and winced slightly at the gruff sound of his voice.

She seemed unperturbed, however. She took a deep breath, as though preparing to make a speech, and launched forward.

"I just wanted to- to thank you for getting me away from- from Jimmy last night. I don't… really… know what would have happened if you hadn't so… so thank you."

The Doctor straightened from where he'd been kneeling and her wide, golden eyes followed him up.

"You needn't thank me, Rose. Anyone would have done it."

Even as he said it, however, she was shaking her head.

"Doctor, the pub was full of people who've known me all my life, and Jimmy was shouting, and I was shouting, and they didn't come. You came to help a stranger, and they wouldn't have even come to help a neighbor and… thank you."

To the Doctor's bafflement, she stepped closer to him, rested her hands very lightly on his chest, on top of the jumper that showed beneath his leather jacket, pushed herself up to her toes, and dropped the lightest, most ethereal kiss onto his cheek. She then dropped to her feet and took a step back, flushing pink and unable to look at him.

The Doctor was nearly floored. The effect of that barest brush of her lips over his skin- almost no pressure- had his blood singing in his veins, and when she started to speak again he nearly couldn't hear her over the pounding of his heart in his ears.

"Erm… Donna said that she would teach me to make chocolate, if I wanted, and I was thinking… maybe I could make your favourite… if I knew what it was."

Chris forced himself to smile at her, even though his mouth wanted to do nothing but gape like an idiot.

"Oh no. Donna's just put you up to this because she can't figure out what my favourite is herself. She'll have to keep guessing until she remembers. I'm not helping her."

Rose looked startled for a long moment, but as he continued to grin at her, her lips spread into a wide smile in return.

"Never you fear, Doctor. I'll figure it out, if I have to try every chocolate combination on the planet. I'll make your favourite."

She turned on her heel and walked away, throwing one final cheeky smile over her shoulder at him before disappearing into the kitchen.

The Doctor sighed heavily and returned to his work. Yes, doomed. That was the only word for it.

~?~?~?~?~

Rory Williams was quite certain that he was doomed, and he couldn't even find it in himself to be sorry for the fact.

He had first encountered Amelia Pond as she threatened a group of drunken men with a knife. He'd then met the flirtatious hellion who would have protected Rose Tyler with her life, had the situation demanded. Then he'd discovered the insecure artist under all of the bluster. They were all Amy Pond, and they were all lovely and they all had his head spinning like a top.

The following day, he'd have sworn he had his head on straight. He'd spent the evening before in meditation and communion with God. He had prayed, pacing the room and speaking with the Creator as though he were there, making arguments and working his way through the facts of the situation.

The town would be in uproar if their priest married the vagrant girl. His Bishop would be called. His calling might be taken from him. He'd never wanted anything but to be a minister- to shepherd a flock. He could not do it to the town.

And yet…

And yet the image of Rose Stone, covered in bruises came before his eyes. He'd gotten the story out of Chris Noble- that the pub had been full but only he, a relative stranger, had gone to her aid. He remembered weeks of seeing her flinch away from her husband, of watching them walk a few inches apart, as though in separate worlds, of wondering about the pair of them, and never investigating.

Did he care, really, what the town thought?

Could he afford to not?

Amelia Pond was dangerous to his heart, to his profession, and to his reputation. Were he to be seen with her, court her or, crime above all, marry her, he would be outcast from the town, he was sure.

He could, however, be her friend. He was decided in his mind- he was an adult and would not have his head turned by the smiles and flirtations of an admittedly beautiful but wholly unsuitable girl.

But then she had arrived at the church with her manuscript and her large green eyes and her smiles and her laughter. She'd offered to help him with his chores about the church, and she had talked to him. He had found, when the head-spinning flirtation was set aside, that he genuinely enjoyed her company.

As conversation inside of a church often did, theirs turned to the divine. Rory was pleasantly surprised to find that Amelia had a nuanced and humanist view on the world.

"The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them unimportant," she said, when they had landed on the age-old question of why a loving god would allow bad things to happen to good people.

As the sun set, and she left him to return to her boat, she leaned up and pressed a brief kiss into his cheek, and Rory knew for certain that he was doomed. She had, over the course of a few hours, captured his heart and he was her willing slave, the town's sensibilities be damned.

~?~?~?~?~

Mickey was well-convinced that he was doomed.

The day after all of the business in town square, he'd gotten the girl doctor's address from Jack and waited outside her door to escort her across town and keep her safe. The Doctor hadn't insisted on it, but Mickey had thought he might take the initiative and maybe impress both his captain and the pretty girl he'd only gotten a glimpse of the previous night.

She'd opened her door and frowned to find him there. He attempted a winning smile like the kind that always seemed to get Jack out of trouble, but she just frowned deeper.

"Er… hello," he tried. "I'm Mickey. Mickey Smith. I'm on the Doctor's crew?"

"Yes, I know. I saw you last night at Donna's place with everyone. Doesn't explain why you're here."

"I… er... " Mickey trailed off, beginning to see that he had, perhaps, made a miscalculation here. "I was just… going to see if I could help you out. Keep you safe?"

The pretty young woman pursed her lips and Mickey was reminded, forcibly, of his grandmother when she was angry.

"That's… very nice of you," she said, and Mickey could tell that when she said 'nice' she meant 'presumptuous,' "but I can get across town very well on my own, thank you. You can just run back to your ship now. I don't need protection."

Mickey's mouth dropped open as she turned briskly away from him and began to walk up the street. He finally shook himself free of his shock, shoved his hands into his pockets, and began his dejected trudge back to the boats. He'd rarely gotten it so entirely wrong with a girl before but, he supposed, there was a first time for everything.

"Actually…"

Mickey stopped short as he heard her speak again behind him. He turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows.

"You could accompany me to church Sunday, if you'd like."

"I… don't usually go to church."

"Oh. All right then. No matter." She turned and walked away again. Though Mickey watched her until she had rounded the corner and was out of sight, she did not look around again.

He resumed his walk toward the boats, confused and frustrated. Why would she refuse his escort across town, but request that he take her to church. The latter seemed significantly safer than the former, to his mind.

It was not until he reached his own boat where Adric waited for him with a toy that needed fixing that it occurred to Mickey what had happened.

She had not requested his company for safety but for… company. She had offered him a chance to spend time with her.

Screwdriver in hand, a wide grin bloomed over his face. There was hope, he realized, and that very hope was sure to doom him.

~?~?~?~?~

For three years, Rose had been certain that she was doomed. Doomed to a life of drudgery and abuse and neglect. Doomed to never see or be anything but Jimmy Stone's emotional and physical punching bag.

She wasn't any longer.

That first day in Tardis, she mostly stayed in the kitchen as Donna went back and forth, instructing her in chocolate-making and running the shop by turns. It was the busiest day that Tardis had ever experienced, and Rose could tell, from the snatches of conversation that she heard passing through the doorway into the kitchen, that she was the reason.

She listened as the Noble siblings fielded the attention between themselves. Donna answered questions in her usual cheerful manner until the questions moved from curious and gossipy to intrusive. She would then lose the politesse of the shopkeeper and wrap the mantle of protector about herself to give her neighbors what-for.

Rose had thought, perhaps, Chris was staying out of it all, but she had witnessed that he was just as protective, if less verbose, than his sister. She'd been carrying a tray of chocolate-covered nuts out to Donna in the main part of the shop and been seen by the patron that Donna had been serving. His eyes had widened at the sight of her face, then he had smirked.

"He shouldn't have had to tell you twice," he said nastily. "Wives should obey their husbands."

Chris had been on his feet in an instant, had taken the bloke by the shoulder and, without a word spoken, had bodily removed him from the shop.

Where Donna was a mother bear, fiercely protecting her cub, Chris was an avenging angel, silent and remorseless.

Upon returning from removing the obnoxious man, he had caught her eyes and smiled tentatively and Rose's heart had given a flutter that she had been certain she was far too old and broken to feel. She had turned and retreated into the kitchen as though running for her life.

She did not see him watching her go or the shadow of sadness that had passed over his eyes when she did.

Donna returned to the kitchen a few short minutes later to find Rose wringing her hands and paying much less attention to the gently steaming pot of chocolate on the stove than it warranted.

"Don't let that burn," Donna said, sharply.

Rose jumped and started stirring the pot immediately.

"What's on your mind, Rose?" Donna asked. She was careful to keep her expression neutral, though she had a bit of an inkling, and it pleased her no end.

"Nothing," Rose said, quickly. Too quickly.

Donna bustled on the other side of the kitchen, waiting for Rose to choose whether she would speak or not. She wasn't made to wait long.

"Only… yeah, there's something. You and your brother, you've done a lot for me and… I want to give you something back. Do something for you, but I don't know what."

"You don't have to-"

"I know I don't have to," Rose interrupts, sounding frustrated. "But I want to… I want to do something. Even if it's something small like… what do you like to eat? I'm a pretty good cook."

Donna smiled. "Chocolate covered strawberries. They're my favourite."

Rose smiled happily. "Wonderful! I'll get started on that immediately!"

"Wait," Donna said, halting her in her tracks. "You can't do it with preserved strawberries, you have to do it with fresh."

Rose frowned, a small worried line appearing between her eyebrows. "But there won't be fresh strawberries until the summer."

"Then it'll have to wait until summer, won't it?"

"But-"

"No buts, you want to make my favourite, it has to be chocolate-covered strawberries, and if that means you have to wait until the summer, then you have to wait until the summer."

Rose frowned in confusion and shook her head after a moment. "Okay then, what about your brother? Maybe I can make something for him. What's his favourite?"

Donna didn't comment at the pink flush that came to Rose's cheeks as she talked about Chris.

"No idea," she said, blithely. "Used to be chocolate and hazelnut when we were kids, but it's different now he says. He might tell you if you ask though."

Rose bit her lower lip nervously. She was mightily intimidated by the Doctor- not frightened, not of what he could or would do to her, but intimidated by his kindness, his cleverness, his age, and his wisdom.

"Why can't you ask?" she suggested to Donna.

"He wouldn't tell me, but he likes you, he might tell you. Go on then." Donna shoved Rose into the main part of the shop where Chris was kneeling at the door, frowning at the hinges.

For a moment, Rose stood unobserved and just looked at him. He crackled with energy, even in stillness, she thought. He wasn't like a puppy or a child- all movement and bounce- he was like a coiled spring or the heavy air before a storm- devastating potential.

Then he shifted his weight and reminded Rose what she was about- she needed to talk to him, not run away like a frightened mouse.

He was just a man, after all. An attractive man, to be sure. A man who had saved her. A man who had never hurt her, but a man in the end.

She was nervous in spite of her mental reminders and had to clasp her hands to keep them from trembling when finally she made herself speak to him.

She thanked him and then, when she was sure he would understand the nature of her request, she asked for his favourite.

The smile he'd given her was blinding- slightly daft, shining bright, and just a bit mad. And then he'd teased her- treated her like a person, a friend, rather than a broken thing. And Rose had found herself teasing back, remembering what it was to feel happy while talking to a man. Remembering what it was to feel happy.

She'd kissed him. It had been an impulse, but one that she had to follow through on, and when she had done, it was like electricity buzzing against her lips. She told herself it was just the scratch of his stubble, but her heart knew that it wasn't.

And when she'd gone back to the kitchen, there was hope in her heart. Warm, wonderful hope, and it felt like rebirth.

~?~?~?~?~

Two days Jack spent in the chocolate shop, and he could see that everyone was doomed.

After the first day, the Doctor asked him along to keep away anyone who would make the place uncomfortable for his Rose.

Because that was what Jack discovered then- Rose was very much the Doctor's. Jack had been thrilled to meet the lovely young woman with the dark-blonde hair. Her smile had been hesitant with him, however- uncertain how to take his blatant flirting.

She'd smiled at Chris though. Brilliant as a star, she'd smiled at him, and he'd smiled back like she was the sun that he hadn't seen in years.

Oh yes, Jack thought as he teased and flirted gently with Rose as they worked together in Donna's kitchen. Chris Noble was doomed.

Amy had also stopped by the chocolate shop after her day spent with the priest, and Jack had seen it in her as well. She had stars in her eyes.

Stars!

Amelia!

For a priest!

Jack was pleased to see it, but he worried. He didn't think there was any way for even the most liberal of priests to marry a girl from the river. It simply wasn't done.

He didn't say this to Amy, however, as she was happier than he'd ever seen her, and he could not bring himself to wash the stars from her eyes.

And then there was Mickey. Good old, loyal, lovable, tin dog Mickey who suddenly had a lot to say about educated women. Most of it was complimentary, but some of it was foolish, and Jack took every opportunity to explain to him why he was an idiot.

It wasn't until Martha Jones arrived in the chocolate shop on the first afternoon that Jack understood. With Martha's eyes on him, Mickey strutted like a peacock and tried to get her attention on him any way he could. Jack was impressed, and more surprised than he should have been that he didn't resort to pulling her hair or putting a frog down her dress.

As they left Donna's place that night, Martha's name was conspicuously on Mickey's lips, as Rose's was equally conspicuously absent from the Doctor's.

Jack could only shake his head and laugh.

And worry. When he was alone in the quiet, Jack did worry. The crew was his home, his family, and his safety. He knew that, when he was with them, he would not be persecuted, beaten, or even killed for his sexual proclivities. Jack worried that, if Chris left, the crew would fall apart, drifting away from one-another like dust on the wind.

He didn't know where he would go.

He wished Chris all the happiness in the world, and if the pretty pink Rose that he had met that day could give him that, Jack blessed them both.

But he feared for himself.


	16. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Well damn, someone dumped UST all over this chapter and didn't clean it up. What a mess!**
> 
> **So this is the last fully-written chapter, but there is one that's about 2/3 complete hanging about in my file. If you're all very good, Santa Clause might bring me a muse before Christmas, and we'll all get another chapter as a gift. If not, I hope it won't be too long before the next chapter is up. You're all wonderful and patient, and I deeply appreciate everyone's sweet and wonderful messages.**
> 
> **I will answer everyone's comments, I've been struggling in the past week. I love you all, and I hope that this chapter is thanks enough for now.**

Martha checked her appearance in the mirror one last time before she left that morning. It was an important day, and it was important that she look cool, collected, and unruffled.

She'd chosen green because she looked well in it, but it was less aggressive than red. They had to avoid looking aggressive, that was important.

With a final nod at her reflection, Martha swept out of her front door only to have her momentum arrested by the man on the other side.

It was the boy, Mickey, from the Doctor's crew. The one who had tried to take her 'protection' into his own hands because, if Amy was to be believed, he was attracted to her. The one who never seemed to open his mouth but to say something insulting.

"Good morning," he said with a grin that Martha thought might have been intended to be charming. "You said I could escort you to church today."

Martha frowned. "Yeah, I did, but you said you don't go to church."

Mickey blushed. "Well no, not usually but… well, I could be convinced… if necessary… and I… wanted to go… with you."

Martha pursed her lips. There was something endearing and appealing about this young man, but he was entirely unsuitable and, honestly, she didn't have time for romance. He'd be leaving with the drifters in a week or two, and she needed to give Rose all the help and support that she could. Though it pained her slightly, she could not encourage the young man's attraction to her.

She could, however, see the benefit of having him along that morning, considering their plan.

"All right then, we're off to the chocolate shop," Martha said, briskly, taking off in that direction without waiting for him to offer an arm.

Mickey stood stunned for a moment, then jogged to catch up with her, falling into step beside her after a moment.

"Er… why are we going there? I thought we were going to church."

"Didn't your Captain or your Doctor let you in on this secret? We've been planning it for days."

"Er…" Mickey said. Jack and the Doctor had tried to tell him about something going on that morning, but he'd brushed them off saying he had other plans. It seemed their plans were, apparently, the same.

Martha sighed. "Rose is going to church, but Jimmy will be there as well. She hasn't had to face him yet, so we're all going with her for protection and for support."

"Why does she have to go to church?" Mickey asked.

"She doesn't, but it's important that she show the town that she left Jimmy for a reason and that she does not feel ashamed. She'll walk in there and those bruises of hers will speak for themselves."

"But she's scared? What would he do to her in a church?"

Martha shook her head. "Probably nothing, but he beat her in a pub full of people, none of whom stepped up to save her. He's called her names and treated her poorly for years, and no one has stepped up. We're standing beside her against the town that would rather ignore what was done to her and have her go back to him, than think about what it might mean."

"But why?" Mickey asked, carefully. "Why help her? Wouldn't it be easier to just let everything run its course without your help? All of you- Donna, and the Doctor, and even Jack- have enough trouble in your lives without making more."

"Easier, yes," Martha said, not looking at him. "And my life has troubles enough, but Rose is a good woman, and she deserves more."

For a long moment, Martha was silent, thinking, as the pair walked in the breezy morning air across the town.

"It's a better way of living though, you know?" she said, after awhile. "It's not fun or smart, but it's standing up and saying 'no' when no one else will."

Mickey shook his head. "You sound just like him, the Doctor."

Martha smiled. "Then he's a very smart man."

"Yeah," Mickey said, softly. "A genius, him. And a very good man."

Martha found that she was inclined to agree.

~?~?~?~?~

Rose was sitting at the counter in Donna's shop, a cup of rapidly cooling tea before her, her face bloodless, bruises standing out in sharp contrast to her milky skin.

Jack was seated on the stool next to her, a cup of tea before him as well. Donna had plunked the beverages down in front of each of them with her usual brisk efficiency before swirling off to check on some pastries she and Rose had prepared the previous night to offer anyone who came into the shop after church when the doors were unlocked.

Rose had tried to sip her tea, but her hands had trembled so badly that the cup had rattled in the saucer, slopping tea down the side. After that she had simply laced her fingers together and sat, still as a statue and stiff as iron.

Jack finished his tea and reached over to touch the knot of her hands. He felt her fingers tense under his, though he'd not have thought it possible, but persisted in unlacing her fingers and holding up one small, bloodless hand.

"You shouldn't bite your nails, Rosie, my girl," he said, examining her rough hand. "Bad for your teeth and the nails themselves. You'll have crooked teeth if you do, they say." He shot a grin at her, showing his own nearly perfect teeth and managed to get a weak hint of her own sun-bright smile in return.

"You should use lotion on these calluses as well," he continued, rubbing his thumb across the pad of her palm, gently. "I think Barbara has something that she uses. Swears by it, she does, and she does have the hands of a schoolteacher. Would never know she was a river rat by those hands."

Jack gently massaged the palm of Rose's hand with his thumb, circling and circling until he finally felt the hand relax. He smiled slightly that even that one tiny bit of tension could be removed.

A quarter hour later, when Chris entered the shop through the kitchen, he found Jack stroking Rose's hand and telling her a story (that Chris knew was true only by having lived it beside him) about a lovely French girl who had taught him the rudiments of massage and made him a great favourite among the boys in their company during the war. He was at the bit where he had (somewhat inexplicably) been naked and Rose was giggling brightly.

As it ever did, Rose's smile kicked Chris in the heart with the force that nearly knocked him over. He hoped that he would get used to it soon, but not that it would go away. For now, her smiles were too rare to grow used to the pressure over his sternum that felt like the weight of the universe.

At the same moment, however, a fire licked the Doctor's belly that her smile was directed at Jack. That Jack was touching- no- _stroking_ her hand, and that she was allowing it when she jumped and dodged a touch from any other man.

He cleared his throat, which made Jack and Rose both turn to look at him. Rather than looking guilty or shocked at being caught out like lovers, both of their smiles grew wider upon seeing him.

"The Doctor can tell you, he was there," Jack said, nodding toward him and setting her hand down gently on the countertop. "Though he wasn't the Doctor back then, not yet."

"Oh no?" Rose said, tongue peeking flirtatiously between her teeth. That smile that always sent Chris' mind to green and distant fields at inconvenient moments.

"Nope, back then he was plain old Chris Mott. Wasn't until he saved my life that he became the Doctor."

"No time for your stories, Harkness," the Doctor said, feeling the tips of his ears flame in embarrassment. "We've got to go to church shortly. Are you both ready?"

At the mention of their mission, Rose's smile quickly faded, and the pretty flush of pink that had come to her face with laughter drained away.

Jack, seeing this, frowned. "Does it have to be this week, Doc? Couldn't it wait?"

Chris sighed and shook his head. He and Donna and Rose and Martha had discussed it at length. Where Rose would have willingly hidden in Tardis for the rest of her life, Donna and Martha insisted that she must return to the world unashamed.

"Going back to church says that you consider what you did right and just, even before God," Martha had said.

"And showing the town those bruises tells them why you left," Donna said. She was not religious, but understood the need to show the pious little town that whatever Gods there were were on Rose's side.

The younger woman had, agreed to the necessity, but had shook with fear.

It was Chris who had finally been able to calm her.

"You won't have to do it alone, Rose," he had promised.

And so it was that Jack and Chris had agreed to attend church services with Donna, Martha, and Rose. Jack had hesitated, briefly, when Chris had requested it of him: he was rarely welcome in any religious establishment. It was his growing affection for Rose that had clinched it, however. If she needed him there to feel safe, then he would go.

Martha arrived then, and with her Mickey. Chris and Jack exchanged knowing looks when they saw their friend opening the door for the pretty young doctor, but kept their thoughts to themselves. They would not be so circumspect after, however.

Rose jumped up and hugged Martha as she walked in and Martha, ever the nurturer, stood and stroked Rose's back for several long moments to allow her to calm.

The bells began tolling, calling the faithful to come, and Rose stiffened in Martha's arms.

"It's alright," Martha whispered. "We do this, and it never has to be done again."

Rose stood up, pulling herself from Martha's embrace, and breathed deep. Now that the time was upon them, she was still and calm and ready.

"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know," came a voice from the door to the kitchen. "It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."

The entire room turned to see Donna standing and watching Rose. "Chris told me that once, when we were kids," she elaborated.

"Did I?" Chris looked surprised. "I'm cleverer than I thought."

"And that's saying something," Jack said, leaning down to stage whisper to Rose.

As he had hoped, the tease brought a bit of a smile back to her face and eased a modicum of the tension in her shoulders.

"Enough, you," Chris said, shaking his head at Jack. "Come on then, let's get this over with."

The group filed out of the shop and waited as Donna locked the door behind them, then, with Donna and Martha flanking Rose and the three men following at their heels like well-trained hounds, the six hurried across the square to the call of the bells.

At the door, Father Williams stood to greet his parishioners. They had not told him their plans and so his eyes widened to see the approaching crowd- first at Rose, for her bruises stood out sharply, un-concealed by cosmetics, then at Donna, for coming at all, and then his mouth dropped open to see the three slightly disreputable figures of the river rats trailing behind.

Chris Noble, for all his peculiar profession, carried himself as a nobleman- shoulders square and head up. The weight of authority carried in his bones. Even in patched trousers and black leather coat, he looked to be a man of influence.

Similarly, Jack moved with the air of the soldier that he had not been in a decade and a half. He had a rake's smile, but one might believe that he were respectable with his long wool coat and braces if they didn't look too carefully to see the stains and patches.

Mickey was another story entirely, however. His dark skin made his bright white teeth stand out and the small glint of a gold tooth in the corner of his smile gave the whole thing a piratical edge. He had chosen his best clothes, but even those had been patched and hemmed a dozen times, and not always with the same colour thread or fabric. More than the other two men, he looked a criminal, even from a distance.

Rory was not fooled, however. Where the eyes of the two older men danced across every face, gauging their welcome, the eyes of this younger man were trained, instead, on the woman who walked ahead of him. Where the other men moved as though they carried weapons, even when they were unarmed, Mickey moved with a more common grace. He was not a man who would be easily caught unaware, but he was no killer.

As the group reached the door to the church, Rory smiled.

"Martha, Donna, Rose," he said, smiling and nodding at each in turn. "Gentlemen," he greeted the men, not having a surname for all of them, and not feeling that they were sufficiently well-acquainted to use their Christian names.

"Father," was murmured all around.

"I am very glad to see you all here today," Rory said, earnestly. "You are all very welcome."

Everyone there knew that he was not speaking for the town as a whole, but rather for himself alone, but they all nodded their thanks at the sentiment.

"It's very good to see you, Rose," Rory said, looking straight at her.

"Thank you, Father," Rose said, softly.

The six trooped into the church together and arranged themselves carefully. First into the row was Jack, sliding all the way to the end, then Mickey, and Martha after him. Rose took the middle seat, with Donna next to her, and Chris on the end. The entire group sat, looking forward softly, even as the murmurs of the other parishioners began to rise around them. There was a great shudder through the church as people turned to look at them, and then to their neighbor to whisper speculation and shock.

In the centre sat Rose, her face white as marble and mottled with dark bruises over her cheekbones and neck. She kept her eyes on the large wooden crucifix at the front of the church, and pretended that she could hear nothing of the susurrus of whispers around her.

Martha reached over and took Rose's hand, squeezing tight, nearly as nervous as Rose herself. It was a dangerous thing they were doing- setting themselves against the town this way- and Martha could feel the weight of the decision in the eyes that rested on them.

There was a flicker of movement from the front row- the Countess' seat. She was staring at them all, open-mouthed, and her face was white as bone. Beside her, and in contrast, Jimmy Stone sat glaring, his cheeks flushing red.

Rose could feel their eyes on her, but she did not look at them. She kept her eyes on the figure on the cross before her and squeezed Martha's hand too hard.

Finally, after what seemed an age, the whispers stopped as Rory mounted the steps to his podium.

"Friends and neighbors," he said, enunciating each word carefully, " _all_ are welcome at the table of the Lord."

He gestured for them all to stand for the hymn, and they did so with a rumble and swish of clothing.

Chris found himself straining to try to hear Rose in the midst of the hymn. He wanted, oddly, to know what her voice sounded like raised in song, but all he could hear was the off-key warblings of his sister beside him.

When the singing was finished and everyone resumed their seats, Chris noted that Amy was seated at the far end of the row next to Jack, her eyes trained on the man in the white robes at the front of the church. He shook his head, wondering what could possibly come of all of that, but resolving not to interfere. Then he shifted, as Rory began to pray, to stretch his arm across the back of the bench, behind Donna's back.

Without realizing it, his fingers brushed over a cotton-clad shoulder and he felt the muscles tense and jump under his hand. Chris glanced down the row and realized that it was not his sister's shoulder he'd brushed, but Rose's, and her eyes were as wide as a startled rabbit.

She looked around and saw the hand that had brushed her, eyes following it up the arm to Chris and the fear left her face. She gave him a small smile and reached up to gently pat his hand. The touch of her warm, rough little hand against his large, cool one was electric, and Chris had to suppress a shiver of reaction.

"Ephesians, chapter 5 verses twenty-two through thirty-three," Father Williams said from the pulpit, glancing down at the Countess, in case there were any doubt from whence his sermon topics came.

"'Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church…"

Rose stiffened as the priest spoke the order of submission, remembering her own wedding vows- to honour and obey- as he spoke. Chris could nearly smell the bitter fear and guilt coming from her and he ventured to rest his fingers on her shoulder again, brushing his thumb over the curve of the joint, pressing gently to be sure that she could feel it. Unless he was mistaken, she leaned, ever-so-slightly, into the touch.

Eyes flicked to Rose from around the celebrants in the small church, accusation hanging heavy over them all.

Father Williams was not finished, however. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."

An uncomfortable shifting could be heard throughout the room as suddenly the other side of the coin was revealed, and eyes jumped between Rose's bruised and broken face, to Jimmy who sat beside the Countess.

As the words bounced about the room, Chris continued gently stroking Rose's shoulder. Father Williams set his bible down and began to speak on the nature of love, respect, and submission, but all of Chris Noble's attention was focussed on the nerves of his fingers as they brushed over her, and she allowed it.

He walked his fingers from the edge of the cap sleeve of her dress to the edge of the neckline, never touching her skin, but stroking only fabric. From one side other he stroked, writing words in a language that no one knew, drawing pictures.

He could see a slight flush beginning in Rose's round cheeks and traveling with almost imperceptible slowness down her neck and across her chest. It was a lovely shade, far sweeter than the stark white that her skin had been for most of the morning. He could feel the radiant heat from her blush on his knuckles as he approached the neckline of her blouse again and, finally, without conscious orders from his brain, he skipped from cloth to skin, gently brushing calloused fingers over the satin smoothness of her shoulder not covered by her blouse.

It lasted no more than a moment, however before Chris's attention was forced back to the world around him as he heard Father Williams say, with finality, "amen. Go with God." Chris drew his fingers away as though burned, and wondered what madness had overcome him there in that holy place.

There was a shuffle and bump of rising parishioners and Donna shifted beside Chris, starting as she had been asleep.

"Is it over?" she asked, quietly.

"Yes," Rose said, and Chris wondered if her voice was just a little bit breathless. "We can go now. It's finished."

The group rose and slowly filed out the front door as the wave of leaving parishioners allowed. Donna and Martha were careful to remain with Rose, but the rest of the group was separated somewhat as they made their way out the doors.

Rather than freedom, on the other side of the solid oak that separated the church from the world at large, Chris, Donna, Martha, Rose, Jack, Mickey, and Amy found themselves facing a furious Countess Noble. Her face was white and her eyes seemed to be spitting sparks.

"How dare you?" she asked, voice shaking, upper lip pulled back in disgust, looking straight at Rose and Donna. "How dare you make such a scene in a house of God?"

Chris moved, protectively, toward the three women as Jack and Mickey did the same.

"I might have expected of you," Sylvia spat at her children, glaring daggers at the pair of them, "but you, Rose and Martha, I thought better of both of you."

"I don't-" Rose said, softly.

"You would make a mockery of the sacrament of marriage? You make a mockery of the church? Coming when you are hardly fit to be seen?"

"Not fit to be seen?" Rose said, and there was, suddenly, a layer of steel beneath her soft words. "How am I not fit to be seen? Am I not wearing my best frock? Is my hair not washed and pinned? What have I done to be unfit for the presence of the Almighty?"

Sylvia said nothing, only glared.

"Did Jesus himself not live among tax collectors, thieves, and fallen women, or am I wrong?" Donna asked, quietly.

"Those living in poverty, those without homes, those who society scorned," Chris said, ticking them off on his long fingers as he spoke.

"I, however, am unfit to stand in the church among friends, rather than beside my husband," Rose said, her voice soft and dangerous. The inner wolf was growling.

Still Sylvia was silent, though she suddenly looked hunted and afraid.

"Fine," Rose said, softly and coolly. "If that is the case, I will worship elsewhere. Good day to you, Countess."

With head held high Rose walked away, all dignity and cool disdain.

Finally Sylvia spoke, but to her daughter now. "Donna, how could you?"

"Mother," Donna said, sharply. "The only person here today who caused a scene was you. Go home." She then turned to the people surrounding them, watching the exchange. "If any of you would like a cup of hot chocolate, or one of our new chocolate croissants, please come to Tardis, and we will be happy to accommodate you."

With that, she followed Rose across the village square, leading the rest of their friends and her brother after her.

When they arrived at the shop, Rose had already entered and was seated on one of the stools at the counter. Chris was afraid that she was falling apart, as she had done after her first confrontation with Sylvia and took a step toward her with the idea of comforting her, somehow, when she turned to face him.

Her face was pale, but her eyes were very bright, like the beam of a torch, nearly blinding him. Very slowly, a smile grew across her face as her eyes held his.

He could not seem to stop himself answering her grin in kind.

They seemed to stare at each other, caught in the gravity well that was created between them for an age until the bell over the door of the shop tinkled, snapping the tension that had held every person in thrall.

Sarah Jane Smith walked in with her young son Luke.

"We thought we'd like to try some chocolate," she said, glancing around at all of the faces that seemed startled to see her, not understanding what she had interrupted.

"Right you are," Donna said, just a bit too heartily to be believed. She looked down at Luke. "I'm pretty sure that I have your favourite."

Donna's bustle inspired the rest of the group to finally begin to move, shedding jackets and making themselves useful or comfortable, as they preferred. Rose swirled into the kitchen to get the tray of croissants that she and Donna had perfected together, and when she returned, there were more customers, more work to be done, more distractions.

Father Rory made it in after half an hour, robes removed. Before he went to Amy's side, he found Rose and pulled her aside for a moment.

"Thank you for coming to church today," he said, softly. "I understand you won't be back but I'd like to thank you for coming today, Mrs. St-"

"Tyler," Rose interrupted, surprising him.

"Beg pardon?"

"My name," she said, simply. "It's Rose Tyler, not Rose Stone."

She glanced just past the Father's shoulder where Chris Noble stood in easy hearing distance. He glanced up from his cup to meet her eyes.

" _Rose Tyler,_ " he whispered, and, seeing his lips move, she smiled.


	17. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my dearest loves. I think that my mind may, in fact, be my own again, and I thank you all for your patience and kindness to me.
> 
> I cannot promise that Xocoatl will return to a weekly update schedule, but it will be updating again every Friday that I can manage. If it lasts until after my sister's wedding, it might actually start being weekly again!
> 
> Thank you all for being so wonderful and patient and being willing to wait for our wonderful Chris and Rose and their adventures in Gallifrey.

The trees were a riot of spring blossoms as Easter approached, brilliant pinks and whites and violets.  Rose Tyler’s skin, in contrast, became progressively less colourful as the bruises faded day by day leaving, instead, pale skin kissed pink by the sun and hair burnished to soft gold by cleanliness, light, and improved health.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Amy sat with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms around them, back to the ancient apple tree that grew behind the church, watching Rory pace in the soft snowfall of the blossoms.

 

She couldn’t seem to stop a smile as the petals fell into his sandy hair and made bright patches on the black of his shirt, even though his news was not the sort to make anyone smile.

 

“He’s learned the prayers and the scriptures.  He knows the right things to say.  He can even make judgments and speak intelligently about them,” he said, gesticulating wildly and sending a small shower of white petals off his shoulder.  “Every time the Countess asks for an update, I have to give a good report.”

 

“He’s apparently stopped drinking, cursing, and playing cards,” Amy added.  “That’s what we’ve heard, anyway.”

 

Rory nodded, disconsolately.  “To all appearances, Jimmy Stone is a changed man.”

 

Amy pursed her lips but said nothing.  He knew what she thought of Jimmy’s apparent ‘change.’

 

“I’m starting to hear noises in town that Rose should go back to him,” he said.

 

Amy made a noise like an angry cat and Rory nodded his agreement.

 

“She can’t.  She’s come too far without him, if she went back-”

 

“If she went back it would all start over again,” Amy bit off.  Rory knew her doubts concerning Stone’s apparent conversion, and if he were honest, he shared them.

 

“There’s no proof of that…” he hedged.

 

“And there never will be because Rose Tyler will go back to that bastard over my dead body.”

 

Rory gave a rueful smile.  “You shouldn’t curse in the church.”

 

“I’m not in the church, and if God doesn’t know what’s obvious to everyone with eyes, then he should be told.”

 

Rory couldn’t help himself and gave over to laughter.  He sat beside her at the base of the old tree and reached over to brush a few stray flowers out of her long, red hair.  The touch of his hand at the shell of her ear sent a pleasurable shiver down Amy’s spine and she glanced over at him under her lashes, pleased to see that he was blushing slightly.

 

He blushed so prettily.

 

Rory cleared his throat awkwardly and put his hand back into his lap.  “I had an aunt once,” he said quickly, “and she had a dog.  That creature hated everything and everyone except my aunt.  It was the sweetest creature in the world when she was there, but the moment she left the room, it would growl and bare its teeth at everyone.  She made me take it out to play when I would visit, and it bit me once so bad it drew blood.  I went crying back to the house to show her and it followed me in, whining and looking pitiful.  She slapped me for hurting it.”  He heaved a deep sigh.

 

“Jimmy Stone has the exact same eyes as that dog.”

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Chris was stretched out under the recalcitrant engine, grumbling under his breath in a mix of French and German that he’d picked up during the War.  Both were far more satisfying languages in which to curse than English.  French was full of appealing phrases and sentiments that rolled off the tongue like good liquor.  German was full of expressive gutturals that released venom in the mere speaking.

 

And neither language was spoken by anyone else on the crew (save Jack) so he wasn’t often screeched at when a child took his words home with them.

 

When the boat rocked softly at the weight of a boarding body, and a throat cleared behind him, however, it was in English that he vented his spleen.

 

“Don’t even ask.  I don’t know when we’ll be leaving this bloody town, but not yet.  If you need to move on, you’re welcome to, you don’t have to answer to me, damn it.”

 

The Doctor didn’t often resent his position as de facto leader of the odd band of pirates and vagrants that he had gathered about himself over the years, but in the weeks that they had stayed in Gallifrey that spring he had grown weary of the question of when they would leave to move on down the river.

 

The worst part was that he knew they needed to go.  Not just because his crew needed to extricate itself from the honey trap of the town and the snares of love, but because, as the majority feeling in the town became more and more aligned with Jimmy Stone and Sylvia Noble, fewer and fewer of the locals were willing to hire the river rats who had sided with Rose Tyler-Stone and Donna Noble.  Without the ability to do small jobs for money, sell their trinkets, or even go to most of the businesses in town, the crew knew that they needed to move on.

 

Chris knew it as well, but he was the deepest trapped of the lot.

 

“Oh,” the intruder said.

 

Logically, Chris knew that he should not recognize a voice in a single word.  Not even a word- more a sound.  A syllable.  Barely an exhalation of breath to express surprise.  But that very voice had rung in his dreams for over a week now, constantly following him, haunting him.

 

“Rose!” he shouted and, attempting to sit up, bashed his head against the engine which elicited a whole new stream of French vitriol.

 

“You’re lucky Donna isn’t here,” she said primly, though there was a hint of a smile in her voice.  “She’d wash your mouth out with soap.”

 

Chris had finally managed to extract himself from beneath the engine and caught his first glimpse of her.  She stood unsteadily on the deck, obviously uncomfortable on the moving boards, one hand gripping the dock to keep herself steady.

 

She was a vision in springtime pastels.  The blue skirt that she wore had, he thought, once belonged to a girl on the crew named Ace.  She’d left some years before and had hardly ever worn the thing, preferring trousers.  She was also wearing a white blouse and a shawl in spring green to keep out the cool breeze off the river.

 

Once he could tear his eyes away from her slim form, he noted that she had a basket looped over her arm.

 

“Oh,” she said, noticing the direction of his gaze.  “Donna was going to bring you some lunch but I…” she trailed off, flushing a shade of pink that reminded him of the sky at sunrise that morning- delicate as the inside of a seashell.  She lowered her lashes and continued, not looking at him.  “I asked if I could bring it to you.”

 

Chris’ heart gave a leap that Rose had wanted to be with him.  His logical mind told the organ to stop it’s bouncing about- chances were good she’d only wanted to get out of the chocolate shop and in the outdoors for a few minutes- but it ignored him and set about thundering in his chest like mad.

 

“Oh?” he said, and cursed himself mentally when his voice came out just a bit too high and breathy.  He cleared his throat.  “That was good of both of you.  Thank you.”

 

Rose bit her lower lip and nodded, still not looking at him.  She held the basket out as far as she could toward him without letting go of the dock.

 

“Here you go,” she said, nodding toward the basket.  “I’ll let you get back to work then.”

 

“No!” he said, quickly, though she hadn’t actually made a move to leave.  “Stay.  You can share the meal with me- knowing Donna, she’s put enough in there for ten.”

 

That brought a slightly rueful smile to Rose’s face, and it occurred to Chris that she’d carried the blasted thing down to him herself.

 

Which reminded him…

 

“Where’s Jack?”

 

Chris and Jack had taken it in turns to keep the chocolate shop guarded.  One of the two men was a constant presence- either Chris’ capable yet quiet form fixing windows and latches, or examining tricky fixtures in the kitchen, or Jack’s boisterous personality behind the counter, bringing laughter wherever he went.

 

Any time Rose had left she shop, one of them had gone with her as a guard.  Whether it was to the market, to the church, or to the boats, she’d been in the presence of one or the other for two weeks.

 

At the beginning, she had been almost pathetically grateful to them both.  Terrified of every person she saw, terrified of her own shadow, she had allowed them to speak for her anytime she was challenged, and had cowered in their wake.

 

For the past few days, however, she had begun to chafe at the necessity of waiting for either Jack or Chris’ convenience any time she wanted to leave the chocolate shop, though this was the first time that she’d stepped out on her own.

 

“Jack got involved in flirting with your sister and Mickey, so I came alone,” Rose said.  “If I’d waited for him, you wouldn’t have had your lunch until it was nearly supper time.”

 

Chris couldn’t help a smile at the defiant set of her shoulders as she met his eyes, even as she continued to cling to the dock against the slight roll and dip of the deck.  The sparkle in her eyes and the courage it had taken her to come out on her own made his heart glad, but he was terribly frightened for her at the same time.  He had noticed the changing allegiances in the town, and had felt the sympathy for Rose’s plight fade with each bruise.  Without those reminders livid on her skin, the people’s memories were woefully short.

 

“No one bothered you, did they?” he asked.

 

She glanced away from him before answering.  “I didn’t walk through the town, I came through the woods.”

 

“Rose, you have to be careful!” he said in horror.  “Someone could be waiting for you- there are no witnesses in the woods!”

 

Rose’s eyes blazed again with frustration.  “Don’t be an idiot!  No one could possibly have known I was going to pass through there today, and I’m much more likely to be harrassed where there are people than alone in the woods.  What is your problem?”

 

Chris could feel the tips of his ears heat.  The truth was that he was worried for her, frightened for her, and wanted so desperately to keep her safe that it was a constant ache just below his heart.  He couldn’t say that, however.  He just glanced away from her, studying the toes of his boots and muttered, “you’re right, I’m sorry.”

 

He peeked up at her through his black lashes to find her looking at him with something strange and unnamable in her eyes.

 

He gave her a crooked smile and said, “forgive me?”

 

A smile spread over her face, and her amber eyes seemed to melt to gold.  “Of course.  You don’t even need to ask.”

 

“Fantastic,” he said with a bright grin and a bounce that rocked the entire boat.  Rose gasped and clutched the dock so hard that her knuckles stuck up white in her small hands.

 

Chris swallowed a laugh and took the basket of food from her to set down before taking her arms and carefully guiding her across the heaving deck to sit on the bench, reveling in the feel of touching her, even that little bit, and having her neither flinch nor pull away.

 

When he moved away to get their lunch basket, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the bench beside her, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment.

 

“Thank you, Doctor. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

 

He gently ran a hand over the sun-bright silk of her hair and breathed the smell of her- cinnamon, chocolate, and rose soap over warm skin and healthy sweat.

 

“Nothing to forgive, precious girl,” he murmured to her.  “Nothing at all.”

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Jimmy Stone prowled her office like a panther, never lighting in one place, simply going around and around.

 

“It’s your son she’s spending all her time with,” he said, yet again.  “Aren’t you going to do something?”

 

“They’re both adults, James.  I can’t make them do anything.  But everyone in town can see what you’re doing, and everyone is on your side.  Rose will come around, I’m sure of it.”

 

Sylvia sipped her tea and sighed at the bitter taste.  no sugar for it during Lent, but there were only a few weeks left before Easter.  The warmth and the aroma were soothing.

 

“Rose will be back with you soon, I’m sure of it.  God will find a way.  Perhaps you should consider visiting the chocolate shop and seeing what she is up to there.  Show an interest in her, perhaps?”

 

Jimmy gave her a long look that was nearly unreadable, but after a few moments, he nodded.

 

 


	18. Blind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've been looking forward to this chapter since I started writing this story. It is, very nearly, my favourite scene in the entire movie. I'll tell you when we get to my absolute favourite scene.
> 
> All the love and thanks in the world to WLG, Fleur, Layla, and VC, the lovely ladies that keep me going.
> 
> And to you, my dear readers. Thank you all for your patience and love and willingness to put up with long waits while my brain returns from vacation.
> 
> I love you all and hope you're having a fantastic Fanfiction Friday!

The Saturday before Easter was Wilf's birthday.

"I'd like to have a party," he said to Rose as she poured him a second cup of chocolate and slid it over beside his plate of French pastry. "I haven't had a party in years. Not since my Eileen died. Haven't felt like partying since, but now that Donna and Chris are back… well, it doesn't seem so bleak anymore."

Rose smiled at him, and began to wipe down the counters.

"Donna's said she'll plan it, and Chris has agreed to host it on his boats," Rose glanced up in surprise, but Wilf continued. "You'll come, won't you my dear? I've also invited Sarah Jane Smith and her son Luke, and all of the members of Chris' crew, and Martha Jones, and Father Williams. You must come."

Rose's smile transformed into a grin. "Of course I'll come, Wilf. I wouldn't miss it."

~?~?~?~?~

Rose had spent much of her life in various kitchens. As a child, the kitchen of her mother's bakery had been her playground. The cupboards and dark spaces had lead to the fairy worlds of her young imagination. The scents and sounds and effort of her mother's work had been the background music to her play.

In the kitchen of the pub, everything had been dirt and drudgery. It had been impossible to keep the place truly clean, working alone as she did, and it was full of painful memories- Jimmy's anger and abuse.

Back in her first kitchen, Rose found that it was no longer a place of fantasy. It was better than that.

She glanced up to where Martha and Amy were chopping vegetables, side by side, talking about music. Martha loved Jazz, while Amy loved American rock and roll, most particularly Elvis Presley. They talked in cheerful dischord that occasionally manifested in singing, to everyone's enjoyment.

Behind her, Jack and Mickey scrubbed potatoes at the sink. Donna had quickly determined that neither of them had even the slightest cooking skill, and had set them to work on something with which they could get into no trouble. Listening to them bicker and splash each other with the water, Rose thought that Donna had been overly optimistic about their behaviour.

Chris was at one side of her, cleaning the fish for Donna to stuff while Rose plucked a quail that Donna had had shipped in. Donna herself was in constant motion- fingers in everything, watching, berating, bickering, and giving her opinion on every conversation.

Rose and Chris were working quietly, though there was quite a bit of communication that seemed to happen in the brush of arms, the bump of shoulder, the quiet questions as they passed tools to one another.

Looking around, Rose felt a warm glow at the nearness of her family.

Wilf's party would be that evening, and the final preparations were in full swing. Rose had her pink dress cleaned and waiting for her to change into it upstairs, and there was a feeling of excited anticipation buzzing in the air.

Over top of everything, nearly inaudible, came the bell of the shop door. Donna flitted out of the room, and Rose rinsed her hands to be ready to help her if she needed.

Sure enough, after a moment or two, Donna's voice came in over the din. "Rose, sweetheart, would you come in here for a moment?"

Something in her voice made everyone in the kitchen go quiet. The water continued to splash and pots still burbled on the stove, but all conversation ceased as though snapped off like an electric light.

An odd, cold tension filled the room as Rose wiped her hands on her apron and walked out to Donna.

In the main shop stood Jimmy, his hair combed and pomaded, his clothes clean, his face shaved. He carried a slightly ragged bunch of flowers and wore an expression reminiscent of a chastised puppy.

"Rose!" he said, seeing her come in, a smile lighting his face. He took a step forward, holding out the flowers. "These-these are for you."

Rose took the flowers, silently, clutching them to her chest like a shield. She nodded her thanks, but did not speak, her face pale, and her eyes large and dark, staring at him.

"Could I talk to you, Rose?" Jimmy glanced at Donna and raised an eyebrow in obvious dismissal. "Alone?"

Donna ignored him and looked to Rose who gave a tiny nod.

"Right, I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything," Donna said, significantly.

Rose could hear her steps back to the nearly silent kitchen. She could almost feel every ear turned toward her and knew that nothing would happen between herself and Jimmy that was not witnessed by six people.

"You're looking well, Rose," Jimmy said after a long, awkward moment.

She was, he saw, looking her over. Even as pale as she was upon seeing him, her skin had a healthy glow that he hadn't seen in a long time. Her hair was clean and soft around her shoulders, and the circles were gone from under her eyes. She had fleshed out a bit at hip and breast and the bones of her face had receded slightly with a sweet roundness. Her wide mouth was soft, petal-pink, and sweet-looking.

"You're very beautiful. I don't say that often enough, and I'm sorry about that," he said.

Rose gave him a quick, tense smile, but he could sense a slight warming in her. Women loved being complimented.

"Thank you for saying that, Jimmy. Was there anything else?"

"Rose, I know what I did was wrong. I'm so sorry," he said, his voice becoming pleading. "I've been trying so hard to be better and I  _am_. I  _am_ better, I swear it!"

"All right," she said, her voice still wary.

"You must forgive me, Rose. I've done everything that I can think of to make it right. You must see that. I'm a changed man."

"All right," Rose said again.

"So will you forgive me? Please, say you will. You must."

Rose stood silent for a very long moment, but then she nodded. "Yes, of course I forgive you."

Jimmy's face split in a brilliant smile. "Oh, thank you, Rose! I am a new man, you'll see. Everything will be different now!" He reached out to take her arm, but Rose stepped back abruptly.

"Everything already is different, Jimmy."

His smile faded. "But… when you come back with me-"

"I won't be coming back with you, Jimmy. I live here now. I work with Donna and… this is my life now, and you are not in it, don't you see?"

Jimmy's face darkened slightly, his eyebrows drawing together. "We are still married in the eyes of God, Rose."

"Then he must be blind. Thank you for the flowers. Please leave now." Without another word, Rose turned on her heel and stepped back into the kitchen, flowers still held to her breast.

She was met by five pairs of wide eyes. Five silent faces watching and waiting until the bell over the door had run again and the sound of wood against wood told them all that Jimmy had gone.

Then there was a sudden surge forward. Everyone was chattering in shock and awe and approbation. For a moment, the wave of overwhelming pleasure blocked out everything, but as Jack was coming in for his third hug, she noticed what was missing.

"Where is Chris?"

~?~?~?~?~

He'd been a fool. He'd known from the first moment that she could never be his. Even were she free of the Stone bastard, she wouldn't want  _him_. How could she? How could he have been such a fool?

The moment that she had said that she forgave her husband, Chris had been out the back door, running like he always did.

He should leave, he thought. He should go, just climb into his boat and move on. Jack and Mickey would catch him up when they had the chance, but even if they didn't, it would be alright. Perhaps he needed time on his own.

He should never have come to Gallifrey. He should have left moments after seeing his grandfather. He should never have let himself become entangled in the politics and intrigues of the town.

He should leave.

So deep in his thoughts was he that he didn't hear the pounding footsteps on the path behind him, or sense the approaching body until there was a hand on his arm.

Faster than thinking he was on the attack and had the man pushed against a tree, his large hand at the other's throat.

"Hey, Doc, calm down!" Jack gasped, putting his hands on the Doctor's arm. "It's just me."

The Doctor relaxed enough to let his friend go, but Jack could see that the man wasn't calm.

"What are you doing out here? Why did you leave, Doc?"

The sound that Chris made could most accurately have been called a growl, and it startled Jack to no end.

"How can you even ask that? She's going back to him, isn't she? Putting herself back into danger, all for a pretty face. The… the… stupid little  _ape_." This last was spat as though it were poisonous.

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked, incredulous.

"She-"

"She sent him away, Chris. She's staying with the shop. With Donna. With  _you_." Jack grabbed his friend's shoulders and shook him gently. "She said…" Jack smiled a bit, remembering how proud he'd been of her, "-she said that if they were still married in the eyes of God, that he must be blind."

"She said-" Chris' eyes were huge in his pale face. He looked almost painfully hopeful, and horribly afraid.

"She doesn't see herself as married, Chris. And that Stone bastard has no part of her anymore."

~?~?~?~?~

The door to Sylvia's study crashed open, startling her into blotting the page she had been writing. She looked up to find a vision of menace in her doorway

Jimmy Stone was a different man than he had been just two hours before in the chocolate shop. His hair was mussed, his eyes bloodshot and feral, his face set into dangerous lines.

"That little slut sent me away," he roared, crossing to the desk and slamming his fists onto it.

Sylvia gasped and could taste the miasma of liquor coming off of him.

"You're drunk," she said, coldly.

"I went to her, like you said. I told her what I'd done. What I was doing. How I was changing. For her. For that ungrateful bitch who left me in the first place."

"James, calm down!" Sylvia shouted over him. He was pacing angrily, picking up ornaments and slamming them down. He would break something soon.

"Rose will see what you've done, she will, I promise," Sylvia soothed. "She'll see that she's better off with you. You just have to give her time."

"You think I haven't given her enough time?" Jimmy roared. "Weeks it's been. Weeks wasting my time with your priest and your lessons and your fucking bible. Weeks that I've had to pay a cook to keep my pub properly open. Week of losing money and losing time and that little slut sent me away!"

He was screaming and at this last he threw the little figurine that he was holding at the wall behind Sylvia's head where it exploded in a shower of porcelain shards.

One piece grazed Sylvia's cheek and another her arm. She could see the welling blood on her arm and feel the sting of a graze on her face.

Suddenly, she could see. She could see the man that Jimmy Stone had always been. As though that sudden violence had knocked the scales from her eyes, all was clear.

"Rose will never go back to you," she said, quietly, standing. "You will leave this town and not return, do you understand me?"

Jimmy stared at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

"There will be police here tomorrow morning. If you are still here, they will take you away for what you have done to Rose." Sylvia didn't know from whence the words came, but they bubbled out of her as though she were expelling a poison, leaving her clean for the first time. "I will testify against you, as will my son and daughter and Martha Jones. You will be locked up for life, Jimmy Stone."

"But-"

"No. Go. Now."

He vanished through the door and Sylvia sat heavily in her desk chair, feeling as though a rug had been pulled out from under her feet.


	19. Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A third update in a row! This is very exciting! That said, there will be no update next week because I might very well be actively going crazy. Never fear, however, because after that my sister's wedding will be behind me and my life will (hopefully) go back to some approximation of "normal"... whatever that means.
> 
> Regarding this chapter... all I can think is to ask that it is considered penance for everything I've done up to this point.

Wilf’s birthday dinner was an unqualified success.  Donna had, astoundingly, incorporated chocolate into every dish, not just the desserts.  The spices and sweetness of her chocolate shop were present through the whole meal and everyone ate to excess.

 

Conversation flowed like the wine, and even young Luke Smith wasn’t left out.  The town-dwellers and the river rats found that there was more that they held in common than different and laughter rang from surprising sources.

 

Rose and Donna swirled through the crowd, offering dishes and whisking away plates.

 

Finally, when all had been eaten and exclaimed over, the chairs and tables were moved out of the way, and Mickey Smith and Ian Foreman and a few of the other river pirates pulled out their instruments, and the dancing began.

 

Rose watched, smiling, from the prep kitchen that had been set up on Chris’ boat where she washed the dishes.  Martha and Donna had been helping her, but Martha was currently dancing with Luke Smith, the pair of them laughing and swinging each other about like fools.  Jack had come up and pulled Donna, against her pro-forma protests, into a dance that had her pressed against him and swaying.

 

“Not a bad party, eh?”

 

Rose jumped and dropped the plate she had been scrubbing back into the filthy water of the sink.  She scrambled to pull it out, only to have it taken from her, and the rag she had been using plucked from her hands by a pair of large, long-fingered hands.  The dish was wiped clean, rinsed, and stacked with the other clean dishes to be dried before those same hands took hers and turned her to face their owner.

 

“Don’t you ever get a break?” Chris asked, glancing up again to see Donna and Martha still dancing.  “Looks like it isn’t against the rules.”

 

“Someone’s got to keep their head about them and not get swept away by charming men or this lot’ll never get cleaned up,” Rose said, tugging her hands out of his to turn back to the sink.

 

“Just a minute, Rose,” Chris said, grabbing her hand again to turn her back toward him.  “The dishes will keep for one minute, won’t they?”

 

Rose glanced behind her to the mountains of dishes, but nodded and turned toward him.  She lifted her chin, defiantly, but didn’t quite meet his eyes.

 

Chris blew out a long breath.  He’d been practicing this speech all afternoon, but here, with her standing in front of him, all of his words seemed to vanish into time and space.

 

All he could give her was the truth.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, softly, still holding her small, rough hand in his large one.  “I’m sorry I left this afternoon.”

 

The way her lips pursed and her eyes slid away from his face told him that he had been right in thinking that she was upset with him for it.  Jack had told him to go back and talk to her at once, but he’d been a coward.

 

He couldn’t be that anymore.  She deserved better.

 

“Why did you do it?” she asked.  

 

He let out another sigh.  It was time to confess.

 

“I thought you were going back to him, putting yourself in danger again and I-”

 

But Rose pulled her hand away, interrupting him.

 

“Go back?  To Jimmy?  What kind of a fool do you think I am, Chris Noble?”

 

To his own surprise, Chris chuckled.  “It’s not you who’s the fool, Rose, it’s really not.  It’s me.  Don’t you see?  If it had just been about you making a foolish decision to go back to him, I wouldn’t have run.  I’d have argued with you.  I’d have told you you were a fool and tried to force you to see reason.  I do it with Donna all the time.”  That elicited a small smile from Rose who had seen him and his sister go at it hammer and tongs before.  “If that was all it was, I’d have stayed, but it wasn’t.”

 

“So why then?” she asked, her eyes wide and fathomless seas of molten gold.

 

He took a deep breath and threw himself into their depths to sink or swim.

 

“It wasn’t about you going back to him.  It was about you leaving me.”  Her eyes widened, but he didn’t allow her to speak, just rushed on with all the words that he had been holding back for weeks.  “I want, more than anything I’ve ever wanted in all my life, to see you safe and happy, but nearly as much- so much it’s an ache in my heart- I want you to be with me, Rose Tyler.  I want to be the one who stands between you and anything that might hurt you.  I want to show you the world and the stars and all of the beauty and danger and just… everything.  I want to give you everything.  And I want to see you smile, Rose.  I want to see it every day- all the time.  I want your smile to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I see when I go to sleep at night.  I dream about your smile, do you know that?”

 

Without realizing it, Chris found that he had taken a step closer to her, the hand that he had held in his own was pressed against his heart, and without his conscious permission, he reached up to cup one soft, pink cheek.

 

“I don’t want it to be a dream,” he said, and his voice had dropped to a husky whisper.  “I want to father your children and hold you while you sleep.  I want to be the one you come to when you’re scared or happy or confused.  I want to be everything to you because, Rose Tyler, you are everything to me.”

 

His heart hammered under her palm, blood rushing through his ears so he almost didn’t hear the small whisper.

 

“Oh, Doctor.”

 

“Rose?”

 

She smiled slightly and glanced toward the dance floor where the tempo of the music had slowed, and the couples were swaying gently, each in their own world.

 

“Come dance with me, Doctor.”

 

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.  “I don’t dance.”

 

Rose raised her eyebrows skeptically.  “All that time with Jack in France and you can’t dance?”

 

“I didn’t say I can’t dance, just that I don’t.  Been around a long time, me, you can believe I’ve danced before.”

 

She swayed toward him slightly, just with the beat of the music, her eyes bolder than he’d ever seen them.

 

“So you’ve got moves like Jack?” she asked, the tip of her tongue peeping through her teeth at the corner of her smile.

 

Chris snorted.  “Jack?  Compared to me, his moves are nothing more than the flailings of some teenager on his first date.”

 

She grinned triumphantly, and he suddenly saw that she’d trapped him.

 

“Then show me your moves, Doctor.”

 

Chris sighed but, in truth, he wanted her in his arms, even if it was only dancing.  He pulled her close, too desperate to touch to even lead her out onto the boards, and placed one large hand low on her back, the other holding her hand still over his heart.

 

She melted into him, sighing deeply, her head resting on his shoulder, her free hand wrapping around his waist as they swayed slowly in time to the music.

 

For the first time in a long time, Rose Tyler and Chris Noble were at peace.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Jimmy watched the festivities from the shore through a bleary haze of anger and alcohol.  As his wife sank into the arms of the Noble bastard, his vision went red.

 

Jimmy Stone was a dog- an alpha in his own sphere, but he could never take on a wolf.

 

Chris Noble was a wolf.

 

So, he was beginning to see, was Rose.

 

Even through the fug of alcohol in his brain, he knew that if he went and attacked Noble among his friends and followers, he’d have his throat ripped out- possibly not even by the man himself.  If he tried to claim his wife back, they would close around her and he would face a pack of dangerous animals, all looking to take a piece out of his hide.

 

If there was anything in the universe that Jimmy Stone respected, it was his life.

 

He couldn’t make a frontal assault.  Knew he would never be able to claim Rose back from them, and he’d lost his home, his respect, everything.

 

He had one last underhanded blow to make, however, before he vanished.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

Rose had never dreamed that it might be like this.

 

When first she had been with Jimmy, he’d been sweetness and gentleness.  He’d made her smile, had flattered her and made her feel beautiful.  He’d given her poetry and flowers and she’d thought that was love.

 

Chris was gentle too, in the way of a big man- one who knows that he could hurt, but knows better than to do so.  His hands were large and very warm against her back, and his breath tickled the tender skin behind her ear as he softly whispered the words of the song that Mickey was playing behind them.

 

There was heat inside of her too, and that was the strange part.  There was a flame burning low in her chest, spreading down through her stomach, her hips, and lower, throbbing between her legs as Chris shifted his hips against hers.

 

“Remember sunshine can be found behind a cloudy sky, so let your hair down go on and cry,” he murmured to her, lips just brushing the shell of her ear in a way that sent lightning to the tips of her breasts.

 

Rose breathed deep, feeling her nipples brush against his chest as she did.  She was going to combust.  She would simply go up in flames if he didn’t stop touching her, swaying with her, whispering to her.

 

She wanted something that she couldn’t name.  Wanted it so badly it made her knees weak.  Wanted it so much that the words came out, unbidden, on a moan.

 

“I want…”

 

Chris stopped singing.  He stopped swaying.

 

Thank all the gods he didn’t stop touching her. She thought she might die if he did.

 

He pulled away, just an inch or two to look into her eyes.

 

“What do you want, precious girl?” he asked softly.  His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them- fathomless as the salt sea.

 

“I don’t… I don’t know.  But I want it so bad it’s like I’m on fire.  Like it’s burning me up.”

 

He gave her an odd, crooked smile.  “Me too, sweet girl.  Me too.  I think-” he paused, hesitating for a moment, the smile widening and making those sapphire eyes sparkle.  “I think you need a Doctor.”

 

Before she could roll her eyes or tell him how absurd he was, his mouth was on hers.

 

It didn’t bank the fires, didn’t re-solidify her, didn’t make the wanting go away.  What his kiss did was to show her that she wasn’t the only one burning.

 

His mouth was gentle, asking permission every step of the way.  It coaxed and tempted and Rose- poor Rose who knew nothing of seduction or lust- was carried along on the current of his ardour.  She opened to him like a flower and he sipped her sweetness like nectar.

 

On and on he kissed her, never hurrying, never pressing, until Rose thought she might go mad from the slowness of his pace.  She wanted so much and so badly and had no idea how to ask.

 

She curled her fingers into him, one on his shoulder, the other at the back of his neck until her nails bit into him and suddenly, with a growl, he wasn’t slow and gentle anymore.

 

He hauled her into him and plundered her mouth with his- scraping his teeth over her lower lip and sucking her tongue into his mouth.

 

Rose gasped and he was suddenly gone.  He stood before her, his eyes wide and horrified.

 

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he stammered, looking away from her as though afraid of what he would see.  “I didn’t mean… I mean… I’d intended to… but then I… God, I’m so sorry.  I should never have…”

 

“Doctor!” Rose cried into this muddle, silencing him in an instant.

 

He peeked up at her through his lashes like a chastened child.

 

“Oh Doctor,” she murmured, stepping forward, back into his arms.

  
Rose put her arms back around his shoulders, raised herself up onto her toes, and kissed him.


	20. Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we're back to having warnings at the beginning of the chapters... this is a violence warning, most particularly for the end.
> 
> Happy Fanfiction Friday, everybody!

The town was silent and severe, glaring down with a censorious eye after the bright lights, music, and liveliness of the river rats' boats.

Jimmy slunk to the back entrance of the old bakery to avoid the eyes of the town. All his life, the town had been his. He was a good businessman, his wife was meek and submissive, and his friendship with the Countess had meant that he had long had a hand in the decisions of the town.

Now, with the entrance into Gallifrey of the damnable chocolate shop, everything was ruined. In one fell move, all his years of building his life and his position in the town of his birth were crumbling about him like Ozymandias.

Coward that he was, he would not take the frontal assault against the police and the Countess. Nor yet against Chris Noble and his men.

No, Jimmy would slink from town, tail between his legs, but he would do some damage first. If Rose Tyler-Stone could force him out of Gallifrey, he would be sure that Gallifrey was no home to her either.

The door into the back of the chocolate shop was locked when he tried it, but that was alright. He supposed he'd expected it. The small window to one side of the door shattered easily as he brought a rock into it, the sharp, almost liquid sound of the glass over the floor nearly made him giddy.

He scratched his hand and arm up a bit, reaching through the window to unlock the door from the inside, but no matter. The adrenaline pumping through his blood and singing in his head like fine whiskey kept him from even noticing the pain.

Into the shop he crept, stumbling in the dark and bashing his hip against a countertop, his head against a hanging pot. After several minutes of haphazard groping, he finally found a light switch and flicked it on to illuminate the large, warm kitchen in its harsh yellow glow.

Unlike the kitchen in the back of his own place, TARDIS' was spacious and scrupulously clean. The pots gleamed and the countertops glowed and there was a low smell of dark chocolate that seemed to live in the air, though there was no food out on the counters to draw bugs.

For some reason, seeing the kitchen so and imagining Rose in it, laughing and looking at the Noble bastard caused rage to bubble in Jimmy's chest and stomach. It wouldn't do- Rose should have been with him, in his squalid kitchen, taking care of his customers and his needs.

He pulled down the pots, throwing them across the room with a clatter of copper and steel and aluminium. He threw the sparkling silver tools from their drawers. He opened every cabinet and swept through them, the sound of broken bottles and jars a piercing descant in the cacophony of destruction.

Every object has energy as it stands in place. When one destroys it- shattering glass and pottery or toppling carefully constructed towers of tools- the energy changes. Jimmy could feel the joy of destruction filling him up like warm soup and he started to laugh, even as he continued to wreak havoc on Donna's kitchen.

Finally, he flung open a cabinet, intending to continue his reign of destruction, only to find himself confronted with a selection of bottles of fine liquors. Donna used them in her chocolates for flavouring and, occasionally, she, Rose, and Martha would have a few sips to celebrate an especially fine day.

In spite of his lust for destruction, Jimmy's lust for oblivion was stronger. He chose a bottle at random and opened it, drinking deeply with a sigh of relief.

Looking around himself, he felt a glow of pride at the horror he was leaving behind for the bitches to return to, but this was only one room. Carrying the bottle, he continued into the shop proper. He pulled down shelves, scattering boxes and wee chocolates across the floor. He stepped on these, grinding them into the stones, smearing them across the clean surfaces. He kicked wood until it splintered and broke, shattered every piece of glass in the place save for the front windows, and left bedlam in his wake.

He'd finished his first bottle of liquor and started on his second by the time he ascended the stairs. He stumbled into the first room he came to and stopped dead.

Like some rabid dog, his nose told him where he was. He could smell Rose in the air and on the sheets and blankets. He could see her in the small scatter of cosmetics on the small vanity table and the bright clothes hanging on pegs by the door.

The nearness of her, knowing that she had been happy, and was now with another man- that she neither needed or wanted him, Jimmy, any longer- that she was flaunting her rebellion in his face before the entire town- made him see red. What sense he had begun the night with fled him then and all he knew was the desire for destruction. Were Rose herself before him, he would have killed her. Because she was not, he felt no desire but to take away the smell of her, the knowledge of her joy, and the evidence of her life without him.

The bottle fell from his hand, smashing on the floor, and the smell of liquor gave him an idea. Jimmy reached into his pocket and, with a trembling hand, withdrew the small book of matches that he always carried along with a short, workman's knife, and a crumpled package of cigarettes.

It took Jimmy three tries to light his match, his hands were so unsteady and he could hardly see. When, finally he had it lit, it occurred to him that he was standing in the middle of the pool of alcohol and would go up in flames along with everything that Rose loved. When he had finally stepped away, the shaking of his hands had put the match out and he had to light another. This one he threw immediately into the pool of liquor, only to see it drown.

Finally, frowning in concentration, Jimmy lit a match and set the pool of alcohol on fire. It lit with a puff of blue-white flame, nearly invisible in the light of the room, but catching the floorboards surprisingly quickly, and from there the sheets and quilts on the bed.

For too long, Jimmy simply stood watching the beauty of the flame's destruction before the smell of smoke and the slick of sweat of his face reminded him that he too was flammable.

In point of fact, it came to him suddenly that what he had done was far more dangerous to himself than anyone else. To vandalize a shop with a controversial owner and clientele was one thing, but to try to burn it down? Even Gallifrey could not turn a blind eye to such an action.

With a sudden surge of fear, Jimmy backed away from his handiwork- too far started to stop now- and raced down the steps to escape both his own death and the consequences of what he had done.

~?~?~?~?~

"Rose," Chris murmured against her mouth, nearly a groan of defeat. "Oh Rose."

She wondered if this was what falling in love felt like, or if that was everything that had happened before- the lingering looks, the smiles that made her heart lurch, the laughter, the growing trust, and the growing friendship. Perhaps this was something else. Something unique, but not separate from love.

Gently, she pulled away from him and looked at him with wide, dark eyes.

His blue eyes appeared again in a flutter of surprisingly long, black lashes and, for an instant or two, they remained clouded with the same intoxicant that had filled Rose's blood as his mouth had moved over hers.

"What is it?" he asked, forehead creasing in concern.

"I want," she said, slowly and clearly, taking a moment with each word to be sure that it came out steady and strong without the slightest tremor, "you to make love to me."

Suddenly his eyes were clear and wide and a little bit shocked.

"You… what?"

"I'm not a blushing virgin, Doctor. I've…  _danced_ before. Not like this but… I do know where this is going and…" she trailed off, not sure how to say what she was feeling. Like, if she wasn't allowed to put her hands on his skin and have his on hers soon, she might explode into pure energy and drift away into the night sky to join the stars in the firmament. Like if he didn't move his mouth from her lips to the tingling spot on the side of her neck in just a moment, she would scream and run mad into the night.

"But… but what about-" Chris began and Rose stopped him with a finger on his mouth.

"There are no buts, Doctor," she said, firmly. "There is not a doubt in my mind. Is there one in yours?"

For a long moment, he just looked at her. He knew what she meant by "doubt." And she had just assured him that if the ghost of her husband were to manifest between them in his bed, it would not be she who had brought him.

"Not a one," he said, with a smile.

~?~?~?~?~

Jimmy caught his foot on the edge of a stair and tumbled down the steps. The last sound he heard was a crack that sounded a bit like a melon does when one drops it onto pavement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week's chapter will be NSFW for sexual content. I like to warn folks in advance of this kind of thing 'cause you never want to open something up to read at work and be shocked.


	21. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huzzah! We're finally earning that "adult" rating with something other than sadness and angst!
> 
> Just to remind anyone who forgot last week's warning: this chapter is NSFW for sexual content, so if you've been reading this story to your children at bedtime... why on earth are you reading this story to children? Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done!
> 
> A smupdate for your Fanfiction Friday!
> 
> (The word 'smupdate' is a registered trademark of Fleurdeneuf and I have to pay her every time I use it. I mostly pay her in smupdates.)

Chris smiled at the thought of the stack of dirty dishes that Rose had tried to use as a shield against him. She'd been only too willing to leave them behind as he'd tugged her hand into the darkness of the marina.

The boat on which their friends were still dancing was the largest of the little fleet, the one that was shared by Nyssa, Tegan, Adric, and Turlough. The Doctor's boat was smaller and moored just beyond a small bend in the river, out of sight of his sister and their friends. Chris thought to send up a small prayer of thanksgiving that the priest has already left. He and Amy had sat together through the party, talking as though no one else existed, but he'd had to leave as he had service at sunrise the following morning, and had sent a slightly farcical adjuration to the rest of them to follow suit so they would be bright-eyed for church at dawn as well.

Chris led the way, ducking under the canvass tent under which he slept in fine weather. In foul, he slept under the boards in the bottom of the boat where it was warmer, if somewhat damp.

He turned on the paraffin lamp and turned to see Rose entering the small, womb-like space, the golden light gilding her and making her shine. He thought, then, that it was a shame that he'd never seen her by candlelight. It was a lack, among a hundred others, that he vowed to make up.

So far as he was concerned, he had his entire life to see her in every light and under every sky.

For a moment, Rose stood just inside the flap of canvas, still as a startled rabbit. She looked at him with those wide, golden wolf's eyes and just stared. Then she took a deep breath, and raised her hands to begin unfastening the buttons on her dress, her fingers moving so rapidly that she already had four undone in the time it took Chris to take the two steps to her and put his hands over hers to stop her.

"Not so fast," he murmured, gently bringing her hands to her sides and then returning his fingertips to the exposed skin of her neck and the top of her chest that her quick fingers had revealed.

"I thought... " she said, looking confused, "I thought we were going to… to... "

"We are, sweetheart," Chris said, gently, his calloused thumbs rubbing circles over her clavicles that Rose thought might just set her aflame. "But there's no need to rush. We've all the time in the world."

A crease appeared between her eyebrows, and a look of complete incomprehension came into those wide, gold eyes. Chris cursed the Stone bastard in his mind. How had he so badly managed such a precious gift?

Chris shook his head to dispel even the thought of the man. He had Rose before him and he would allow nothing to come between them to put out the light in her eyes or to stop him enjoying every moment of her awakening.

Rose wondered what was happening. The Doctor was barely touching her, just looking at her as though she were the most beautiful, most valuable, most  _fantastic_ thing that he'd ever laid eyes on, but still he had not undressed her. He hadn't begun doing what she knew was the next step. She could tell that he was ready- he strained against the closure of his jeans, but still he did nothing more than gently stroke the skin at the top of her chest, her shoulders, and her neck, trailing fire along where his fingertips brushed.

She knew it would be different than it had ever been with Jimmy. She felt more for this man who she'd known such a short time than she'd ever felt for her husband. She knew that Chris would never hurt her, that he'd be gentle and kind as he took his pleasure from her, and she wanted to give him that, but he seemed in no hurry to have her.

She'd wanted to give him something- some piece of herself. He'd given her beautiful words and touched her so compellingly that she'd thought she might die. She'd believed she had only one gift to give a man, meager though it was, and she'd offered it to him, but he  _still_ wasn't taking it.

Rose wondered if she'd done something wrong and had just opened her mouth to ask, when Chris swooped in and took her mouth with his own again, washing every question and doubt from her mind in a wave of bliss.

Chris smiled against her mouth as he felt her finally relax, unconsciously melting against him. That small sign of comfort from her gave his hands the liberty to wander. He didn't unbutton her dress further, but slid his hands down across the skin that was displayed by the released buttons, and then over cloth where it covered her. He felt her nipples rise against his palms under the thin cotton as he brushed his hands over her breasts, then to her waist, and hips, finally reaching around to her backside, pulling her closer to him still.

Rose's hands crept up Chris' chest, across the leather and wool to find skin of their own. Her right hand remained on his shoulder to hold herself up as his kisses seemed to dissolve her bones, and her left hand went to the back of his neck and then up, into his soft, slightly bristly, cropped hair, scratching with her fingernails.

Chris made a small sound in the back of his throat and Rose smiled. No, it was never like this with Jimmy.

Chris' hands tightened in the softness of Rose's bottom, squeezing gently and he felt his control wane perceptibly. He wanted to go slow- to show her all the joys and pleasures of her body and his, but she was warm and soft and it had been a long time since he'd  _danced_. He'd have to move things forward or he ran a serious risk of just exploding like a supernova and consuming everything around him in the heat of his death.

He began to move his hands, always slowly, always giving Rose time to move away or object, from her bottom and up, one hand finally coming to rest in the sunlight silk of her hair, the other spanning her waist so that his thumb could slowly stroke across her breast- the smooth weight of it against the top of his forefinger, his thumb brushing across the tight bud of her nipple, and feeling the slight tremor that ran through her each time he did.

Rose couldn't think. She couldn't seem to do anything but let Chris touch and kiss and stroke and squeeze. His hands were impossibly gentle- they never pinched or pulled or bruised. Every touch seemed perfectly calculated to drive her another step closer to some unknown brink. She was terrified, and she was more excited than she'd ever been.

After several long moments, Rose realized with some small, logical portion of her mind that hadn't yet been swept away on the tide of sensation, that, where her dress was practically falling off her shoulders, Chris stood in jacket, jumper, and jeans, barely disarrayed. Her fingers itched to change that, and so she reached up and began to shove gently at the leather jacket that he was still wearing.

Chris had to admit that he was reluctant to take his hands off of Rose's body, but the realization that she was taking the initiative in undressing him filled him with a sense of pride and arousal so profound that it nearly brought him to his knees. He moved his hands away from her and let the jacket fall from his shoulders into a heap on the floor.

When the jacked made its dull fwhump to the floor, Rose pulled away from Chris' mouth for the first time, and took a small step back to look at him.

"I don't think I've ever seen you without it," she said with a small smile, looking up at him from under her lashes. "You're practically naked."

Chris, himself, was nearly speechless at the sight of her. Her dress was undone halfway to her navel, her hair was tousled, her lips were bright red and swollen-looking, and her eyes were darker than he'd ever seen them.

"Do you know how many languages I speak?" he asked, hearing his voice come out both breathless and hoarse.

Rose raised her eyebrows but shook her head.

"Five. English, German, French, Japanese, and Russian. I speak a bit of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese as well. But there isn't a word in any language I know that is good enough for the way you look right now, Rose Tyler."

The pink in her cheeks deepened do a dark rose, and her teeth sank into her lower lip.

"I love you," he said, almost without willing it. His mouth ran away and his mind stuttered to catch up.

Her eyes flew wide and met his in sudden shock.

"Is… is that okay?" he asked, suddenly afraid that he'd misread everything between them.

Rose hesitated for only a single beat before a slow, glowing smile spread across her face. "Yeah. It's okay."

Chris grinned, and stepped toward her again. "Oh… good," he murmured before dropping his lips to her neck at the join of her shoulder. When she gasped in shock and clutched at his shoulders, he mumbled, "fantastic," against her skin.

With his confession, Chris found new courage to move forward. As his lips brushed over neck and clavicles, his fingers found the little buttons that held together Rose's dress. He unbuttoned each one in turn until they went too far down to reach. Then he, gently, removed her hands from his shoulders and pushed the dress off of her, stepping back to look at what he had revealed.

Her skin was alabaster white where her clothes covered, and sun-kissed peach where they didn't. She was slim-waisted with wide hips and high, small breasts tipped with rose-coloured nipples, and his mouth watered at the sight of her.

Rose stood for a long moment under his gaze before his wordless scrutiny suddenly made her self-conscious. She lifted a hand to cover herself and opened her mouth to apologize (she was too thin, too pale, too… something) when he spoke, breathing the words like a prayer.

"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

The sight of the pink blush that suffused Rose's cheeks and slowly trailed down her neck and onto her chest at his words gave Chris the nearly irresistible desire to follow that path with his lips and tongue.

Instead he held out his hand to her, wiggling the fingers just slightly to entice her. Rose grinned and placed her hand in his, letting him pull her across the tiny space and direct her onto the bed. She sat and watched with wide-eyed fascination as he pulled his jumper over his head, taking in every scrap of new skin he revealed.

He was long and lean and just a tiny bit skinny. He wasn't scrawny- not by any stretch of the imagination- but she could see his ribs where they pressed through his skin, and the slight concavity of his belly. His skin was pale, though not so much as her own, and there was a trail of dark hair from his navel that disappeared into the top of his jeans, which he was, even at that moment, unfastening.

What caught her eye, however, was the scar that crossed the right side of his breast in a long, jagged line.

She opened her mouth to speak- to ask him about it when he bent down to shove off his jeans, then straightened, standing before her naked.

He was a Greek statue made flesh- even his slightly overlarge nose and ears added to the impression. The sculptural lines of his cheekbones and chin, the creases of his forehead and the set of his mouth made him a portrait of Hades. Rose decided, then and there, that if she was his Persephone, she would eat every pomegranate in the world to ensure that she stayed by his side for as long as she lived.

As long as they both would live.

"You're beautiful," she said, softly, and stood to go to him, putting her hands on his chest- one over the scar on the right, one mirroring it over his heart on the left, "and I love you."

"Oh thank God," Chris breathed, then bent and pulled her to him into a tight embrace, and a desperate kiss that pressed the hard evidence of his desire into the warm softness of her stomach.

He kept himself wrapped around her, even as he guided her back to his bed and sat her on the side. Then he knelt and, very gently, began to remove her knickers, brushing gently against her thighs and calves, even as he pulled them off of her, leaving her bare.

"Gods," he murmured, a prayer and a blasphemy all at once. "Gods," he said again, as though he had no other words.

Rose wondered what he saw. She'd looked at herself a little bit before, but what she'd seen in Donna's looking glass couldn't possibly elicit the kind of reaction she was seeing on Chris' face- that combination of awe and disbelief and joy that took ten years from his features.

"Lie back, sweetheart," Chris said, softly. "Lie down, please?"

Rose took a deep breath. It was time then, time for it all to come to an end. She was sorry that the warmth and the touching, the kissing and the closeness were coming to an end, but she was glad she'd be able to give him this. She was sure he'd be gentle with her, and after, when he fell asleep as Jimmy always had, she'd have the warmth of his body and the freedom to explore his skin herself.

Chris felt her muscles tense as she did as he asked, and another flash of irritation crossed his mind, but was quickly dismissed. He would show her in every way he knew how that she was safe in his hands.

Chris' bed was narrow- meant for a single man used to sleeping on an army cot or the hard ground. He knew that if he tried to lay beside her, it would move things along far more quickly that he wanted, so instead he knelt at the side of the bed looked at her, laid out before him, a golden angel, a pirate's treasure.

"Chris?" Rose said, tentatively.

"Shh," he said, with a crooked smile. "Let me look at you for a bit. I've dreamed of this, you know- you in my bed. Reality is rarely better than dreams but when it is… let me enjoy it."

Rose subsided and, after a moment, he began touching her again. He stroked over her skin, finding places that she hadn't even known could respond to another's touch. The inside of her elbow, the back of her knee, the underside of her breast, the soft skin behind her ear and on the back of her neck- hidden by her hair.

He found each spot with his long fingers and then, when Rose could hardly remember anything but his name, he returned to each with his lips and teeth and tongue.

The first time that Chris closed his lips over one pink, peaked nipple, Rose let out a cry that was nearly a scream. She opened her eyes to find his face over hers, a pirate's grin on his lips, and his eyes sparkling with want.

"Yes, my precious girl," he murmured, kissing her gently. "Scream for me."

Through it all, there had been a pooling, liquid sort of heat between Rose's thighs. She felt like she was melting from her womb outward. Like she was striving for something, but she didn't know what. It was delicious and frustrating and then, suddenly, he was there.

Chris's fingers gently probed the source of her wanting, still gentle, still stroking and exploring and driving her mad but, after a moment, he was there. He slipped a finger inside of her and Rose shattered.

Chris watched as she came apart around him, her eyes opened in shock, and they were dark gold, like the light of eternity. She moaned low, and that sound of ecstasy filled his ears as the smell of her want and her completion filled his nose. He was consumed by her- every sense, every nerve strained toward her in all of her glory.

As Rose slowly descended from her peak, breathing hard and sheened in sweat, he continued to stroke her gently, unwilling or unable to give up the pleasure of touching her.

Rose opened her eyes and was somewhat surprised to find that the world was much the same as she had left it. It seemed, even, that almost no time had passed as stars had burned and died behind her eyes and her body had shone as bright as any of them. She had expected the world to have changed- consumed by the fires of the sun, perhaps, but she was still inside the canvas walls of the Doctor's room, and his blue eyes were still above her, sparkling with an amused smugness, superseded by love and desire.

"What was…" Rose started, and then trailed off. "I'm sorry," she said then, quietly. "I don't know what happened."

In an instant, the smugness was gone, entirely overtaken by the sweetest kind of love.

"Oh, Rose," he said, leaning down and kissing her gently on the mouth, the cheeks, the corners of her eyes. "That's supposed to happen. If a man is any kind of a man at all," and a cold hardness came into his eyes for an instant before being banished, "it will happen for you as often as possible, precious thing."

Rose blinked at him, eyes wide with wonder. "Is that… is that what it's like for men when…" She trailed off, flushing, and glanced away from him.

Chris was charmed that she could still be shy with him after what he'd done to her. "A bit, yeah," he said, with a grin.

Rose took a deep breath and met his eyes, dead on. "I want to give that to you, Chris. I don't know how, but I want to. You'll teach me?" Until this last, her voice had been strong, determined, but with that final question, an uncertainty crept in that nearly broke his heart.

"I'll show you anything you like, darling," he said, quietly, the endearments slipping off his tongue without his conscious thought. He'd wanted to call her so many things over the weeks they'd known each other that his heart and mouth were running away with him. "I'm yours."

"Come here, please," she said, taking his hand and tugging him into the bed with her.

He joined her, laid out next to her so that every inch of their skin that could touched. He kissed her then, slow and sweet, his tongue and teeth and lips speaking words of love into her mouth that she swallowed into herself. His hands traced every inch of her warm skin, stroking at touching, teasing, tickling, arousing.

He gently rolled her onto her back, his thigh pressing hers apart gently. He noticed her tensing against him again and pulled back to look at her. There was a shadow of trepidation in her eyes, and he stopped, moved off of her and began to stroke her again, petting her hair and back, soothing her as best he could.

"I'm sorry," she murmured against his chest, sounding distraught. "I didn't… it's not…"

"Hush," he said into her hair. "It's fine, sweetheart. We won't do it like that, not until you're ready."

"But I want…"

"Oh Rose… there's more than one way to go about this, you know," he said, with a smile in his voice.

He rolled with her so that he was the one with his back to the mattress and she was draped across him.

"Sit up, sweetheart, and put your legs on either side of me."

He helped her get situated, the feel of her bottom rubbing against his cock the most glorious thing he thought he had ever experienced. When she was settled atop him, he wondered why he hadn't thought of this before- it was the most glorious view in all the cosmos, he was certain.

"Blimey," he breathed. "You're beautiful."

She smiled at him, but bit her lip in consternation. "I don't know what to do," she said, her eyes wide on him.

"Don't worry. I'm here."

From that position, he began to make love to her again, stroking her skin, taking her nipples between his fingers to roll them and make her head drop back, exposing that long, golden column of her throat to him.

He sat up, after a moment, the movement sliding her damp sex over his cock and nearly driving him mad, but he took her nipple into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue, while his now-free hand drifted back between her thighs, where she was growing wetter by the moment.

"Perfect," he murmured around her nipple. "Beautiful."

He continue to pleasure her, stroking and kissing, licking and fondling until she was wet again- slick and smooth- and he thought he might die if he didn't have her. Her hands had not been idle. One was on his head, holding him to her breast like a child, the other had found his cock and was exploring it with a distracted curiosity that nearly made him shoot off in her hand.

"Rose, please… please," he murmured, realizing that he was begging.

"Yes, Chris. Anything."

He lay back again and put his hands to her hips, guiding her over him. He guided himself to her entrance, and then took his hands away, allowing her to move as she chose.

Rose sank onto him, gravity and his preparations making the descent smooth and delicious. She gasped as she came to rest, filled as she had never been filled before. It was a revelation, this sensation. No wonder the human race had continued for thousands of years, if this was how it felt.

After a long moment, Chris' hands were back on her hips, urging her to move. Between his hoarse affirmations and advice, and his insistent hands, Rose was able to find a rhythm that resonated inside of her, setting off shockwaves with every descent, every pull of his body and hers. Soon she was no longer thinking about every move, her body was acting on an instinct as old as humanity, seeking its own pleasure, twisting and riding and grinding against him.

Chris could feel his control being worn to a thread. He wanted so badly to lose himself inside of her, to fly, but he would not take the leap alone. He would have her beside him, or not at all. And so he pressed his thumb to that centre of female pleasure and drew tight circles and, gratefully, felt her tense, her internal muscles contracting around him in a vice-like grip, and she threw back her head and howled.

He surged into her and joined her.

~?~?~?~?~

As she lay across him, both of them sweat-damp and sated, she spoke almost sleepily.

"It must be nice, bringing your home with you everywhere you go."

Chris chuckled, and wrapped his arms just a bit tighter around her.

"Sweet girl, this isn't home. It's just a place."

She was home. He knew it. He'd never be able to leave her now.


	22. Afterglow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who prefer your fanfiction PG-rated and skipped last week, Chris and Rose have finally said the big three words to each other and consummated their relationship (as I warned would happen).
> 
> For those of you who asked what happened to Jimmy a few weeks back, we have an answer.
> 
> For those of you who have just been reading and not asking questions or avoiding certain things, Hi! You deserve love as well!
> 
> After this chapter there will be one more, and an epilogue. The next Nine and Rose AU will start up soon after this one ends, never fear!
> 
> This chapter has a wee bit of a religion warning, and many of Rory's lines near the end come directly from the script of the movie, not my own mind, which is why they're much cleverer than things I ususally write!
> 
> Happy Fanfiction Friday to you all!

"So… did you see which way they went?" Jack asked Donna with a grin, bumping her shoulder flirtatiously. Both of their arms were full of dishes that they were taking back to Tardis from the party.

"No, but if they're doing unspeakable things in my kitchen, I'll remove Chris' bits with a dull knife," Donna said, though she was laughing as well.

"Poor Rose."

"Her own fault for falling for my brother in the first place."

They walked in contented silence for a few more minutes before Jack noticed something in the air.

"Do you smell smoke?"

Donna took a deep breath. "Yeah, I think so. Wonder what's happening?"

"Maybe…" Jack said, and then trailed off. "Maybe it's just someone out here in the woods with a cigarette?"

"Yeah," Donna said, but her voice held no conviction. "Maybe that's what it is."

Their steps picked up speed, moving together toward the source of the smoke smell. Jack began to pray- something he'd rarely done before, save in foxholes- that his instincts were wrong.

They were not.

Smoke poured from the windows of the chocolate shop. Donna dropped her dishes into the grass at the back of the shop and ran to the front, Jack on her heels. There was a crowd gathered at the front of the shop, including the small fire brigade for the town, already putting away their hoses.

"What happened?" Donna shouted at one of the men on the fire truck.

"Hard to say," said the fire chief Alistair Stewart. "There isn't really much damage from fire that we can tell- it's confined mostly to a single room, though there's a lot of smoke. It's funny though, the fire didn't start in the kitchen, which is what you'd expect. It started in the bedroom there at the top of the stair." He pointed at the window on the front of the building.

"But that's Rose's room!" she cried. She turned to Jack. "Chris and Rose, where did they go? Did you see them? Did they come back here? Were they in the middle of that?"

"I… I don't know," Jack said.

"I have to find them," Donna shouted and took off running back toward the river, shouting Chris and Rose's names the whole way.

Jack turned to the fire chief. "Have you been in there? Is anyone hurt?"

Stewart shook his head. "We only just got the flames out. We're going in now."

"I'm going with you."

Stewart gave the younger man a long look, but there was something in the set of his jaw and the shine of his eyes that told him that there would be no dissuading Jack from his goal.

"As you like. We can always use more hands."

~?~?~?~?~

Rose had fallen asleep almost immediately, but Chris was still awake, gently trailing his fingers through her hair, so it was he that first heard someone calling their names.

"Chris? Rose!" came a sobbing voice through the woods. "Where are you? Rose? Rose!"

Rose twitched on top of him and blinked awake.

"Did you call me?" she murmured, not lifting her head from his chest.

"No, there's someone in the woods looking for us," Chris said, moving her off of him gently so that he could get up and pull on his jeans. "It sounds bad, you should probably get up."

He was loath to lose the picture she made- pink-skinned and sleep-and-love-tousled and in his bed. He swore to himself that he'd have that picture regularly, if he had anything to say about it.

"Chris? Dear God, CHRIS!"

Without waiting for Rose, or bothering to re-don his shirt or shoes, Chris was out of the room, on his boat, and on dry ground in a few leaping bounds.

"Donna? Donna, what's happened?" he cried, finally recognizing the voice. "Donna, I'm here," he said, as she plowed into his arms, sobbing.

"Oh thank God," she breathed, her head on his shoulder, tears falling onto his breast. "Thank God you're here." She seemed to calm in his arms for a moment before she tensed again. "Rose? Where is Rose?"

"I'm here, Donna," Rose said from the boat. She wasn't as comfortable on the gently rolling boards as Chris, and so was much slower to reach them. "What happened? What's wrong?"

Donna, ignoring the question, let go of Chris and rocketed toward Rose, scooping her into a hug as well.

"Thank God you're safe," she murmured into Rose's hair. "Thank God you're alright." She looked up at Chris, watching them both with a concerned expression on his daft face. "Both of you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

~?~?~?~?~

There is something pathetic about a corpse. A corpse takes all the potential good and evil of a human being and renders it inert. It is clay and nothing else.

Rose had known death before, and this death held no great horror for her. Jimmy's body lay in the middle of the wrecked shop, smaller than he had ever seemed in life, a small halo of blood about his head like some sick parody of a renaissance painting of a catholic saint.

"He died on impact," Martha said, rising from her knees beside the gruesome object. "There's not enough blood for anything else. He must have set the fire and run, then tripped down the stairs."

"Coward," Jack said, a note of bitter disgust in his voice.

"We… well… we cannot know his last thoughts but we can hope they were thoughts of… penitence," Rory said, sounding dubious.

They were arrayed around the body in the pre-dawn chill- Donna, Rose, Chris, Jack, Sylvia, Rory, and Martha. The fire brigade had declared the building safe though filthy, and had allowed them all inside.

"Not bloody likely," Donna said, her upper lip curled in disgust. "Look what he did to Rose and what he tried to do to my shop…"

"What he did do to your shop," Chris said, looking around at the fallen shelves. He and Jack had looked into the kitchen, but had shut the door, deciding it was too much for Donna and Rose at that moment, on top of everything else.

"He'd have killed her if he could, you know he would have!" Donna said, her voice rising nearly to an hysterical shriek.

"He didn't, Donna," Chris said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "It's only wood and plaster and pottery. Nothing we can't fix or replace, I promise."

"It was my home, Chris," she said, and finally the tears took hold, pouring down her face as she turned and buried it against his chest. "I'd finally made a home and… how dare he take that from me?"

"He didn't." It was the first time Sylvia had spoken since she arrived.

Donna pulled her face from her brother's leather jacket and looked at her mother in astonishment. "You would defend him, even now?"

Sylvia shook her head. "That's not what I meant. He did something monstrous to you and to Rose, but if you let his cowardice and smallness run you away from your home then… you've let him win, haven't you?" Sylvia took another deep breath and finally lifted her eyes from the pathetic vision on the ground and met her daughter's eyes. "I'll help you rebuild, Donna, if you'd let me?"

"Why?" Donna said, bewildered.

Sylvia gave a small, tight smile. "Because I don't want you to go. I want you to stay… with… with… your grandfather. And…" it seemed to take a lot of effort for the countess to say the next bit, but she finally managed to get it out, "and with me."

For a long moment, Donna just blinked at her mother in silent incomprehension. Then, in an instant, she was in her mother's arms, and both women were sobbing into each other's shoulders.

Jack, Chris, and Rory all blinked at each other in shock. Chris turned to Rose to ask her if she understood what had just happened only to find that she was gone. She had vanished from their midst without a sound.

~?~?~?~?~

Rose stood at the edge of the water and took great deep breaths of the cold, clean air. The low fog of evening was still hanging about, but the sky was finally beginning to lighten toward morning. She wondered if the sleepless night, the wine, and the chemicals of emotion and passion from the night before had simply made her go mad.

There was no possible way that he could be dead, and yet…

The damp, cool air tasted like freedom in a way it never had before. For the first time, Rose realized that she had spent years looking over her shoulder, even in quiet moments, fearing that Jimmy would come and take every good thing away from her.

Even the night before, she had expected him at every turn. Safe in Chris' arms, the only thing she had been certain of was that he would protect her when Jimmy came.

But now he wouldn't come. He would never be the shadow in the dark again.

Even so, she turned like a startled rabbit at the sound of movement in the forest behind her, and only relaxed when Jack appeared out of the trees.

"How are you?"

Rose shook her head. "Honestly? I don't know. I feel like the world should be a completely different place this morning but… well… it's still the world."

Jack remained silent, and Rose continued as though to explain to herself, more than to him.

"Jimmy is dead and, for me, that's the best news that I could ever hear. Rory and Sylvia would call me wicked, but it's the truth. But Donna's shop… the town… everything… bad comes with the good, doesn't it? It has to."

"You know Donna's dark chocolate?"

Rose glanced at him in shock at this apparent non-sequitur. "Yes, I suppose so."

"It's delicious."

"Yes," Rose said, slowly.

"But it's very bitter."

Rose remained silent for a moment, considering this bit of wisdom for a moment. Jack was right. The air that morning tasted like Donna's chocolate. Bittersweet and spiced and desperately precious.

"Rory wants us all to come to church," Jack said, softly, taking her hand. "He sent me to find you."

"One more moment," Rose said, feeling that the air was waiting, holding its breath for something, and not wanting to miss it.

After a moment, the first shaft of golden sunlight from that Easter sunrise hit the water of the river to turn it molten gold, and the birds burst into sudden, raucous chorus all around them, lifting their voices to the heavens.

~?~?~?~?~

Jack and Rose arrived at the church just as the final chorus of the hymn was coming to a close. They slipped in the door and found that every seat was filled and their only option was to stand quietly in the back as Rory mounted the stairs to his pulpit.

A wave of faces turned toward the sound of the heavy oak door opening then flicked back to the front as though they had never looked. Rose was surprised, however, that many of the faces held none of the accusation and anger to which she had grown accustomed, but sympathy and curiosity in their places.

Her eyes scanned the crowd, picking out those people she knew and loved. In the front row, Donna's bright beacon of hair shone next to her mother's platinum. Several rows back, Mickey and Martha's dark heads leaned toward one another. Amy's red curls stood out from the other side of the church, he rapt attention to Rory obvious even from behind.

The head that Rose had been looking for, however, was nowhere to be seen. Close cropped black hair and ears that stuck out just a bit too far- she was certain that she could have picked them out of any crowd, but they were not there. He was not there.

And then he was. He appeared at her side as if by magic, taking the hand that Jack was not already holding in his warm, callused grip. Rose felt a tension that she hadn't even realized she was carrying leave her at his touch. From the moment that Jack had come to get her from the river, Rose had been afraid that, for all his declarations of love the night before, Chris would have left her and Donna to resume his life on the river.

What surprised her, however, was that the fear had not paralyzed her. She had to deal with Jimmy, and the pub, the town, the Tardis, and Donna, and she desperately wanted Chris at her side to help, but she realized that she had known that if he had gone on his way and left her behind, she would hold up under it, and come out as strong as ever.

As Rory began to speak, Rose smiled.

"I wasn't sure what the theme of my homily today ought to be, after everything that has happened in the past few months. Do I want to speak of the miracle of our Lord's divine transformation?" Rory stood for a beat as though asking for a response from the audience and then continued. "Not really, no," he said, shaking his head.

The congregation laughed just a little bit, and Rory gave them a wry smile.

"I don't really feel like talking about his divinity. I'd rather talk about his humanity… I mean how he lived his life here on Earth. His kindness. His tolerance. Jesus, you see, spent his time here on Earth not with honourable shopkeepers and good church-goers, but with criminals, women of uncertain virtue," Rory's eyes found Jack, Chris, and Rose all standing in the back, "people who never went to church, and people who did the jobs that most of us abhor, and people who looked very different from him." His eyes found Amy, and then Donna, and then Martha in their turn, then returned to the congregation at large. "His first miracle was to provide wine to a wedding so that the festivities did not have to end, because he brought joy in all its forms."

"Listen, here's what I think," Rory said, and suddenly he wasn't a preacher any longer, but just a man, trying to get his friends and neighbors to listen to his advice. "I think we can't go around measuring goodness by what we don't do. By what we deny ourselves. What we resist. Who we exclude." He shook his head, glanced at the Countess, and continued. "I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace. What we create. Who we include."

Once more, Rory's eye found Amy's, and there was an intensity there that most of the town of Gallifrey had never seen in their mild-mannered preacher before.

"Jesus died for every person in the world, and for us to claim that any person is unworthy of that sacrifice is wrong. The greatest gift that we received on this day nearly 2000 years ago was love. So go now, and give love."

It was not the most fiery sermon that Rory would ever give, but that Easter morning, it was precisely what everyone needed to hear and, for the first time in a long time, the spirits of everyone in Gallifrey seemed to lift, and when they left the shadowy old church into the warm spring sunlight, there were more smiles than had been seen in the old town in a long time.

There were some, however, who had found a different message in the words, and when Rose met those ice blue eyes that were trained on her, she felt as though she had been shot through with electricity. As though Rory's words had unearthed a live wire, everything seemed exposed between them.

"How long are you going to stay with me, Rose Tyler?" Chris asked in a low voice that pulsed through her blood like fine whiskey.

"Forever."


	23. Favourite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, my beloved readers: the final chapter of Xocoatl. It's been a lovely time and I'm so glad to have been able to share this story with all of you, but all good things must come to an end.
> 
> Thank you, each and every one of you, for reading, reviewing, favouriting, and following. You're stars, every last one of you!

The Wednesday following Easter, Chris sent Jack down the river with the rest of his crew to find their fortunes as they might, promising that he and Rose would catch them up in a few weeks. Jack had objected vociferously to the idea that Chris and Rose would get married without him, making so much noise about it that Chris had had to cuff his friend in the back of the head to shut him up and had confessed that he and Rose did not feel comfortable marrying in Gallifrey so soon after Jimmy's death. They would wed in the next town the pirates found, quietly and simply.

Jack had shut up and taken Chris' people off into the world, hoping that it wasn't the last time he would see the two best friends he'd ever had.

Mickey had gone with Jack, though he'd arrived at Martha's doorstep again the morning they left, dressed in his best.

Martha had opened the door and just stood, waiting for him to explain himself.

"Er…" he'd said- an auspicious start. "We're leaving today, you might know."

"Yes," she said, nodding. "Chris will be staying for a few weeks, but I'd heard the rest of you were going on. Jack will be keeping you all together until Chris and Rose catch you up, isn't that right?"

"Yeah," Mickey said. "We'll uh… we'll be back in the Autumn, on our way to our winter docking, you know."

"Yes," she said again.

"It's only… well…" he stumbled. "Well… I'm going, you know?"

"Yes, I know."

"I'm going today except that… well… I wouldn't. I won't. Not if… if you wanted me to stay."

Martha raised her eyebrows. "Me? What does my wanting have to do with it, Mickey?"

Mickey pursed his lips, but he was too far started to stop now, no matter how it came out. "You have to know that I'm… fond of you."

Martha smiled. "I'm fond of you too, Mickey, but that's not a reason to stay. Not enough of one, anyway. Fond is… well, it's a reason to come back and see if maybe fond has become something more. They do say that absence makes the heart grow  _fonder_."

"So… you don't want me to stay?"

Martha shook her head. "I want you to be happy, Mickey, and right now, I think that means that you should go back to the river and play your guitar and fix your engines and have some adventures, and I will stay in Gallifrey and be a doctor. But you'll write me, won't you?"

Mickey smiled at that. "Yeah. Every day."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Martha said with a grin. "Once a week is plenty. Just let me know that you're well and… think of me."

"I will, Martha. I'll think of you all the time."

Mickey gently stroked two fingers over Martha's cheekbones and leaned forward to press and gentle kiss on her forehead, pulling back and grinning at her. He'd gone with Jack the next day, but Martha hadn't stopped smiling for several days.

Amelia Pond, on the other hand, had found Chris and Rose in the kitchen of Tardis, sifting through the wreckage to find anything salvageable.

"I'm staying in Gallifrey," She announced as though to a judge.

"Oh yes?" Chris said, distracted. "Rose, what is this thing? I can't tell if it's broken or if it's supposed to look like that."

"It's broken, Doctor," Rose said, glancing up from her own work. "Amy wants your attention, however, perhaps you could focus?"

"She's staying here with the priest, I thought that was obvious on Sunday. Not sure what she needs with me," he said, continuing to toss shards of pottery into the large cauldron they were using as a trash bin.

Rose sighed and rolled her eyes at him, then turned to Amy with a bright smile. "I'm glad you're staying with Rory. I'm so happy for both of you."

Amy grinned back, a slight flush on her cheeks. "Well… it's not official yet or anything but… well… yeah, me too." She took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around her middle as though to hold in her joy or her fear.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked, noting the look of trepidation in the other girl's face.

Amy shook her head and shrugged. "It's nothing really but… well… what am I going to do? I know it's traditional for a preacher's wife to stay home and take care of babies but I just… don't think I can do that. Do you think Donna might need an extra hand around here?"

Rose shrugged. "Probably, though I think the two of you working and living together would be incendiary, and this place has already burned down once. There's another option though. Have you ever considered running a pub?"

Amy stared at her in shock. "A pub?"

"Yeah. I find myself in possession of one and… well… I don't really want it. You can have it if you like."

"You would… give me a pub?" Amy asked, dazed. "I would… how would I run a pub?"

"Doesn't have to be a pub," Chris said, speculatively. "Might not be the proper profession for a minister's wife, but it could be a cafe."

"A cafe?" Amy said, vaguely.

"Or a restaurant," Rose suggested.

"Restaurant?" Amy said, seeming to come back from her trance.

"Or a bakery," Chris said, glancing around the kitchen. "Probably shouldn't open a competing chocolate shop, Donna might take it amiss."

"A pub," Amy said, decisively. "Appropriate has rarely been my wheelhouse, and Rory'll be facing enough problems because of who I am. What I do for a profession will hardly make things more difficult. Or less."

Rose nodded. "You'll be brilliant. And," she glanced quickly at Chris, and then away, "and it will be completely worth it. Every minute."

~?~?~?~?~

For three weeks they stayed in Gallifrey. They spent their days in Tardis, cleaning, painting, and taking shipment of those items that had been destroyed. They spent their nights on Chris' boat, in the privacy of the dark and quiet river.

Rose learned the secrets of her flesh and his. Chris was a patient, careful, and thorough lover, and Rose responded to his teaching with abandon, shedding the pain and fear of her past life and opening like a flower to her lover's gentle touch.

She thought, as he coaxed her higher and higher each night, that there was nothing that she could teach him. Nothing that he didn't know.

Then, one night he woke with a gasp and a cry, sitting up abruptly in bed, jostling her to the floor, the fires of war in his star-flecked blue eyes. He hadn't seen her as he'd sat gasping, and her touch on his arm had made him jump in fear. But then, as his eyes returned from distant and terrible fields, he had reached for her, pulled her to him and, in a broken voice, like that of a child, had begun to whisper his secrets to her in the dark.

Chris had been afraid to lay his secrets on her, to burden her with them, cracked and burdened as she, herself was. In the dark of the night, however, he learned the true resilience of the human spirit- that Rose Tyler, his precious Rose, could bear his burdens and her own and continue to shine with a light that ate at the dark places in his heart.

And he was humbled.

~?~?~?~?~

Finally, in due course, Tardis was ready to open again, and the entire town of Gallifrey was buzzing with excitement. Rose and Chris would leave the day after the grand re-opening to catch back up with Jack and Mickey and the rest. There was a bittersweet feeling of loss and excitement in the air that blended sweetly with the taste of chocolate.

Summer was well upon them, there in the south of England, and Rose had, to her pleasure, found wild strawberries along the river and had harvested them that morning on her way into the shop. When she had arrived, she had taken up a place at one of the large stoves and shooed Donna away, in command of her place in the world.

She melted chocolate into a sweetly bitter pool and dipped each bright red, sour-sweet berry into it, setting it out to harden in the cool of the kitchen. When Chris arrived and found her, her hands were covered in chocolate and she was singing quietly to herself.

"There you are," she said in pleasure. "Come give this a taste and tell me what you think. Its' for Donna. It's her favourite."

Chris raised an eyebrow at the work in progress, but came to her without demur. He examined the chocolate-covered berry in Rose's hand and grinned wickedly, taking her other hand- equally covered in chocolate, and with his clever tongue (for which Rose had gained a great appreciation) lapped the chocolate from her skin, finally taking each finger into his mouth to ensure that every bit was cleaned away.

Rose's heart stopped, the warm, engulfing feel of his mouth on her hand making her breath come short and her cheeks flush crimson. The light of mischief and lust in his eyes bound her in place, unable to move if she had wanted to, which she patently did not.

"Fantastic," he said, finally removing her fingers from his mouth, a small smear of chocolate at the corner of his lips. "You finally figured it out."

"Figured... " Rose's voice was breathy, and she shook her head to clear it of the haze of lust that had descended. "Figured what out?"

"My favourite."

Donna, with impeccable timing, chose that moment to push her way into the kitchen.

"What was that?" she said, glancing over at the pair by the stove.

"Rose figured out my favourite," Chris said, not taking his eyes from Rose, a slow smile growing on his mouth, starting on the left and spreading to the right.

"Oh yes," Donna said, watching the pair with amusement. "What is it?"

"Dark chocolate, flavoured with… roses."

Donna rolled her eyes. "I knew that," she said. "You've some chocolate on your face, and Rose, wash your hands before you go back to work."

~?~?~?~?~

Two days later, as the North wind blew across the river, bearing the scents of summer apples and honey, Chris and Rose, with tearful hugs and promises to return, left Gallifrey behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next week there will be a short epilogue and also (hopefully) the first chapter of the next Nine/Rose AU that I'll be writing- a Pride and Prejudice AU!**
> 
> **As ever, thank you so much for reading and all of your wonderful reviews and comments. They always, ALWAYS make my day!**


	24. Epilogue: Coming Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **And this is it my wonderful readers. I have so enjoyed this journey with you, as I hope you have enjoyed it with me. I thank every one of you for reading and liking and reviewing and just generally being delightful and wonderful people.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Never fear, there is always room for one-shots and missing scenes from this world, so it might not be the end, but it is for now.**

In the autumn, carried on winds that tasted of cinnamon and burning fields, they returned.

Donna and Wilf and Amy had gone down to the river every day for a week, hoping to catch sight of them but, in their perverse way, they had arrived in the night, and one morning the town woke to the bright faces of the pirates.

Martha arrived in Tardis, as she did most mornings, to find that Mickey was there, waiting for her. He hadn't quite kept his promise of a letter a week, but had come close, and the sight of him made her heart leap in her chest. He looked up at her from his cup of coffee and, almost without willing it, she was in his arms, and he was kissing her.

"He won't leave Gallifrey again," Jack said to Donna, quietly.

"Mmmm," Donna said, "I'm not sure she'll stay. I think you could all use a midwife before much longer."

Jack had laughed, and both had glanced at Chris and Rose, walking past the shop hand-in-hand, his head tilted toward her to catch her voice, lost in their own world.

"Not yet, but soon," Donna said, knowingly.

Amy and Rory had waited for their friends' return to wed but, once they were there, had done so in a blaze of gold and russet and amber, under the approving eye of the entire town who had never seen their quiet priest look quite so happy.

Rose stood for Amy, and Chris for Rory, but their eyes were only for one-another, remembering their own wedding, quiet and calm and blessed by the wind and water in a tiny town, with a tiny priest, at the side of the river, their friends around them and God smiling down.

Chris had written Donna some weeks before to tell her that he was bringing her a gift, which he had done in the person of a young man by the name of Shawn Temple who was looking for a position as a cook.

"You need a second set of hands now that Amy's pub is up and running," he told her, "and Shawn is a great hand with every food he's come in contact with. You can teach him chocolate."

He hadn't missed the appraising look that Donna had given Shawn, nor the look that he had sent to her in return. He thought that they would be back in time for another wedding, and the thought made him smile.

And Rose- Gallifrey's Rose- had bloomed. When she'd left she had been coming into her own, shaking free of the fear and pain of a life spent not knowing her own worth. When she returned, she was made new- strong and beautiful, with a wide smile and direct eyes. Not a different woman- not to anyone who had known her- but a woman without the weight of a life that she did not love.

Adventure and freedom suited her, and Donna pulled her aside one day to speak to her about it.

"You're looking well," she said, and Rose had grinned. "You're happy?"

"I am," Rose said, her eyes serious. "It's a better life, yeah? It's not a life where you let someone push you down and kick you aside. You stand up for yourself or for anyone who needs you to stand up, and you say 'no,' sometimes simply because no one else will."

"And you," Rose said, looking around the crowded shop- friends and neighbors bumping into one another around the counter, "are you happy?"

Donna looked around as well, the shop that had become an extension of her own heart. "Yes. I am."


	25. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Sometimes the best cure for writer's block is sufficient motivation.**
> 
> **A very dear friend of mine, who lives too far away to hug badly needs one, and I badly wish I could give her that hug.  I can't, so instead I'm giving her this thing that I have been promising her for an age, and hoping that she knows that I love her.**
> 
> **This is NSFW and takes place a month or so after chapter 23 of this story.**

Chris Noble woke suddenly.

It was not unusual for him to ascend from sleep quickly- the military and his years on the fringes of the law-abiding world had trained him to come awake in an instant at the slightest sign of trouble, but for once he could not immediately identify what had woken him. the lap of the water on the side of his boat was gentle and rhythmic as it had been as he'd fallen asleep. The air was quiet, but not the brittle, crystalline silence of an ended cry. The crickets and frogs and night-birds continued their soporific songs uninterrupted.

Nothing violent or dangerous had woken him.

Suddenly, a noise rose from the bed beside him. A surreptitious rustle and a near-silent hitch of breath that Chris recognized in an instant.

The rustle stopped after only a moment, then began again. Then it stopped again. And began again.

The next time the rustle stopped, he spoke in a lowered voice, hoping to keep her shock to a minimum.

"Anything I can do to help, precious girl?"

She did jump, as he had expected, but she didn't cry out.

When he had found Rose Tyler, she'd been married for three years to a brute. Her mother had died and no other woman had stepped into the rose, and so she had, at twenty, had no idea what heights of sensation her body was capable of.

He had been teaching her, slowly and patiently, since they had first come together. She wanted badly to learn, to know everything, but he insisted on on taking each step at a time. There were so many fearful things that she still needed to overcome.

Just a few days before, he had shown her how to touch herself.

"Just like I touch you, sweetheart," he had said guiding her hand.

"Isn't it wicked?" she had asked, that strange, repressive upbringing showing itself at the oddest moments.

"No, love," he said, sure. "Not wicked in the slightest. If God made us, he made us for this as much as anything else. Go on then."

He had watched in awestruck fascination as, with scarcely another word of demur, she had begun to do as he asked. He watched her short-nailed fingers begin to explore the soft pinkness that had lain open to his eyes. He heard her gasps as she found those places that he had found before, and he noted the way she touched them and filed the information away for another time when it would, again, be his fingers on her.

He had watched until she brought herself to her peak with a cry and a gasp and a glistening rush over her fingers.

Rose went still as a statue beside him, seeming not even to breathe.

"You needn't stop on my account, love," he said, rolling up on his side to face her. He reached one big, long-fingered hand out to cover hers where it was still between her legs, cupping herself. "Only that if you wanted help, I'm willing."

They had made love before sleeping, she rising above him like a goddess, her head thrown back and her spine arched like a bow. He trusted her and himself enough not to even entertain the thought that it had been anything less than genuine, but perhaps it had been less fulfilling than usual.

"Was it not enough before?" he asked. She could be delicate in one moment and impossibly bawdy in the next, and he didn't want her to be shocked. "You need only ask and I'd happily have…" He trailed off, but deliberately moved his fingers against hers, pressing her further into herself and making her gasp.

"No, it's not that," she said, her voice breathy. "It was perfect. I just… woke wanting. And you were asleep so…"

He squeezed her hand again, able to feel the slick slide of her wanting slipping between his fingers.

"If you'd like to finish alone…" he said, leaving the option open. He would allow her anything she wanted, though the feel of that slippery wetness on his hand had made him hard as steel in an instant.

Finally, she moved, pulling her hand out from under his, leaving his on her, and rolling up on her side to face him.

Her dark eyes were black in the night-dim of their cabin, nothing more than a liquid shine in the dark.

"No," she said, simply. "I would much rather have you."

He removed his hand from between her legs and caught hers, bringing the fingers to his mouth to slowly, lovingly suck into his mouth and clean thoroughly with long, sucking swipes of his tongue.

He loved the way her breath went fast when he did that. He'd yet to taste her at the source, moving slowly as they were, but he knew it would come. She loved him, and she trusted him more every day.

Sth threw herself against him with an open-mouthed kiss, her hands scrabbling in the short bristles of his hair.

He smiled into the kiss and slid his tongue along hers, a slow slide that mimicked the rhythm his now-freed hand had begun between her legs.

She was soaked. For all her fumblings had been quiet and secretive, she had stoked herself well.

Chris had just begun to move to his back to pull her atop him when a tug on his shoulder stopped him dead. Rose was pulling him toward her, over her body- trying to move him atop her.

He pulled his mouth away from her, rolling her to her back and hovering over her, carefully resting no weight on her.

"Are you sure, Rose?" he asked, wishing his night-vision were better and he could see her face. "You don't have to. We don't have to, love. You know that."

"I know that," she said, and Chris was comforted by the amused bite in her voice. "If I can't… well, we can move, but for now I want you here."

He could deny her nothing and he gently lowered himself over her. She did not freeze as he put some of his weight on her, and when he kissed her, she began rocking her hips against him in blatant invitation.

Chris had not come to Rose untouched by love as she had to him, and ye even for him this was new- to lay with the woman whom he loved best in all the universe with nearly every inch of their skin that could, touching, knowing that he would soon be touching her as no other man ever had or would.

"Is this all right, love?" he asked, the dip of him brushing her entrance.

There was no hesitation in her- no fear. There was only desperation and desire as she arched against him.

"Please," she begged, all other words having failed her. "Please."

He slid into her slow, the position now unfamiliar to them both. Once he was seated fully inside her, he stopped, breathing hard.

"I love you, Rose," he murmured into her hair. "I do love you so."

"I love you," she gasped. "Please, Chris. I'll die if you don't."

He couldn't help a small laugh at her melodrama, but he could feel it too- a quickening of the blood and a desire to lose themselves in each other again.

He began to move, slowly at first, to acclimate her. But, as she showed no fear, he moved faster and faster, pushing into her strong and sure, and glorying in her willing surrender.

It was fast for both of them, worked up as they had been. Rose cried his name an instant before he shattered as well, her name a prayer on his lips to the glorious galaxy she created in him.

After some moments, once the world had righted itself around them, Chris rolled away, pulling rose over to lay on his chest as he did.

She relaxed almost instantly back into sleep, but Chris lay awake for some moments more, whispering a prayer of thanksgiving to the listening stars for his lovely Rose who had the courage of a wolf.


End file.
